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Books, but one problem is that they are often written to the format. ie A book might be 300 pages, but much of it is padding or secondary, supporting argument;
by jacknews 4y ago
Books, but one problem is that they are often written to the format. ie A book might be 300 pages, but much of it is padding or secondary, supporting argument; it could easily be shrunk to 50 pages without losing much, but publishing doesn't work that way.
- christophilus 4y agoPadding is my main problem with books. Two out of the last three books I read could easily have been reduced from 300 to 25-50 pages. They would have been better and more impactful, too, without all the fluff. Come to mention it, has anyone tried quickread or similar services? If so, what’d you think?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jacknews 4y agoIndeed, I would happily pay the same, even more, for a shorter book, if it was clear that it was shorter for good reason.
- ghaff 4y agoThe economics of publishing are such that books generally have to be at least 250 pages or so. And, yes, for things like business books, something much shorter would often be more. That said, I've flipped through some of the written book summary services and found they cut things way too close to the bone. You need some examples and background to have the same impact. There's probably something between an article and a full book that would be good for a lot of topics. But outside of some sponsored pubs like O'Reilly puts out on various topics, Kindle notwithstanding there isn't a real paid publishing niche for this format. When I wrote a book about open source through a publisher I was actually fairly happy by the second edition with the way the content filled out the pages. But, for the first edition, I did feel like I was stretching to fill out the length.