5 ms·

Another issue is books are too long. Especially non-fiction books. Book publishers know no one is going to buy a 50 page book, so there has to be filler and exc

by 65 2y ago

Another issue is books are too long. Especially non-fiction books. Book publishers know no one is going to buy a 50 page book, so there has to be filler and excessive detail to make a book long enough to be sellable. It ends up just being the same thing over and over again. The author explaining minute details about the day they interviewed someone, what the weather was like, extreme details of the interviewee's facial expressions. The author somehow managing to fit the Stanford Prison Experiment in the book. The author going into excruciating detail about the scientific method. The author giving an unnecessary history of the topic back to when humans were hunter gatherers. It has been a very long time since I came across a non-fiction book that didn't feel like it could've been 50 pages long. I end up giving up a few chapters in.

mejutoco 2y ago
I have an heuristic for this. If I can find the book in an airport, it has the filler you mention. Textbooks are another item where this usually does not happen. How we sleep, the secret to business blabla, consulting tricks, the life of tech visionary, or lifehacks for the 21st century: filler,filler, filler.
OnionBlender 2y ago
Self help books are especially bad for this. I was reading Dopamine Nation and the author describes their office: > My office is ten by fourteen feet, with two windows, a desk with a computer, a sideboard covered with books, and a low table between the chairs. The desk, the sideboard, and the low table are all made of matching reddish-brown wood. The desk is a hand-me-down from my former department chair. It’s cracked down the middle on the inside, where no one else can see it, an apt metaphor for the work I do. > On top of the desk are ten separate piles of paper, perfectly aligned, like an accordion. I am told this gives the appearance of organized efficiency.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  There is something really funny about reading a book about instant gratification and the ways modern technology has altered our demands for it, and then criticizing that book for not getting to the point quick enough. I do agree that 90% of self-help books are better left as blog posts, though. To be honest, all of these "how to fix your attention span" books have been repeating the same thing for nearly 2 decades now. They don't really say anything new about how to do it; they package the same repeated things in new packaging.
BobaFloutist 2y ago
I mean seeing a paperback (or ebook) novella priced at $20+ hurts, even if it's what the publisher needs to charge for the economics make sense.
adolph 2y ago
The book has a distribution challenge in that the content is the same for all people. Sort of like how every programming language book has some content about setting up ones environment, building and the basics that make the rest of the book usable for the person of least experience/knowledge. Just skim past the umpteenth telling of Abraham Wald and the bulleted bombers and get to the meaningful parts. Even Thomas Jefferson condensed the New Testament down to 84 pages. [0] 0. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-thomas-jefferson-created-his-own-bible-5659505/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-thomas-jeffe...
allturtles 2y ago
It sounds like you're talking about adult non-fiction bestsellers. I don't think that has much to do with the reading habits of nine-year-olds. There are plenty of 80-150 page books being published for this age group.
- ghaff 2y ago
  And there are tons of novellas and short stories in many genres.
  - TillE 2y ago
    Pound-for-pound, science fiction short stories are perhaps the most worthwhile and personally enriching literary medium. I love an endless series of giant fantasy novels, but I've read so so many SF short stories that really stick with you and make you think. As long as you're not going back to the old pulps, any decent collection is probably really good.
faeriechangling 2y ago
Books are trending shorter since the advent of ebooks since a short ebook looks the same as a long ebook. So that DEFINITELY doesn’t seem causal to me. I’ve also been hearing for a long time how novellas are the future of books and people simply don’t buy them and they remain a niche format and I don’t see that changing.
beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
Part of this is because a lot of popular non-fiction (i.e. non-academic) comes from long form journalism. Personally, I like that style but understand that some people don't. The focus on that style is not pure information --- the authors aren't writing a textbook or a self-help book --- the authors are telling a story. I could read the wiki page on the Wright Bros, but I read David McCullough's "The Wright Brothers" because the writing is graceful and elegant and the storytelling is vivid and captivating. The worst offenders, in my opinion, are the self-help/business books that aspire to long form journalism but are probably better off left as a bullet list on a blogpost. These ones are also infected by the idea that everyone of their bullet points needs a vague connection to some elaborate neuroscientific explanation and a "case study" that is usually some oversimplification. Cal Newport is painfully guilty of this, for an example; but it's everywhere in the self-help genre and especially in "airport" books. (I actually think Newport is a better blogger and occasional NewYorker writer than a book writer. His "insights" aren't that grand.) Fiction, well, I think a long work of fiction is fine as long as the story can handle it. My tastes tend toward florid, "purple", and quite dense prose and descriptions. I like when an author "paints a scene". On the other hand, I find the recent trend of extremely "to the point", stripped down "minimalist" writing that is very common in a lot of contemporary literature (Rooney, for example) and fantasy writing (Sanderson, for example) to be downright boring and comes off as half-baked. There are probably too many 500+pg books because of publishers though. Fantasy has its own obsession with "epics". 200-250pgs is actually a great goldilocks zone that doesn't get published so often nowadays, but should make a comeback. The big publishers hate them though.
WalterBright 2y ago
Haha. Most books are padded or compressed so they fit pretty much the same volume. A paperback can have dense, small type in it, or larger type with wide margins to "puff up" the size. I've also noticed some paperbacks having thicker pages to make it look like there's more material. I suspect books the same size can have a 2:1 difference in the amount of text.
arvinsim 2y ago
Now that we have LLMs, it's possible to trim the fat out of books and condense them to a more concise version.

by 65 2y ago

mejutoco 2y ago

I have an heuristic for this. If I can find the book in an airport, it has the filler you mention. Textbooks are another item where this usually does not happen. How we sleep, the secret to business blabla, consulting tricks, the life of tech visionary, or lifehacks for the 21st century: filler,filler, filler.

OnionBlender 2y ago

Self help books are especially bad for this. I was reading Dopamine Nation and the author describes their office: > My office is ten by fourteen feet, with two windows, a desk with a computer, a sideboard covered with books, and a low table between the chairs. The desk, the sideboard, and the low table are all made of matching reddish-brown wood. The desk is a hand-me-down from my former department chair. It’s cracked down the middle on the inside, where no one else can see it, an apt metaphor for the work I do. > On top of the desk are ten separate piles of paper, perfectly aligned, like an accordion. I am told this gives the appearance of organized efficiency.

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
There is something really funny about reading a book about instant gratification and the ways modern technology has altered our demands for it, and then criticizing that book for not getting to the point quick enough. I do agree that 90% of self-help books are better left as blog posts, though. To be honest, all of these "how to fix your attention span" books have been repeating the same thing for nearly 2 decades now. They don't really say anything new about how to do it; they package the same repeated things in new packaging.

BobaFloutist 2y ago

I mean seeing a paperback (or ebook) novella priced at $20+ hurts, even if it's what the publisher needs to charge for the economics make sense.

adolph 2y ago

The book has a distribution challenge in that the content is the same for all people. Sort of like how every programming language book has some content about setting up ones environment, building and the basics that make the rest of the book usable for the person of least experience/knowledge. Just skim past the umpteenth telling of Abraham Wald and the bulleted bombers and get to the meaningful parts. Even Thomas Jefferson condensed the New Testament down to 84 pages. [0] 0. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-thomas-jefferson-created-his-own-bible-5659505/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-thomas-jeffe...

allturtles 2y ago

It sounds like you're talking about adult non-fiction bestsellers. I don't think that has much to do with the reading habits of nine-year-olds. There are plenty of 80-150 page books being published for this age group.

ghaff 2y ago
And there are tons of novellas and short stories in many genres.
- TillE 2y ago
  Pound-for-pound, science fiction short stories are perhaps the most worthwhile and personally enriching literary medium. I love an endless series of giant fantasy novels, but I've read so so many SF short stories that really stick with you and make you think. As long as you're not going back to the old pulps, any decent collection is probably really good.

faeriechangling 2y ago

Books are trending shorter since the advent of ebooks since a short ebook looks the same as a long ebook. So that DEFINITELY doesn’t seem causal to me. I’ve also been hearing for a long time how novellas are the future of books and people simply don’t buy them and they remain a niche format and I don’t see that changing.

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago

Part of this is because a lot of popular non-fiction (i.e. non-academic) comes from long form journalism. Personally, I like that style but understand that some people don't. The focus on that style is not pure information --- the authors aren't writing a textbook or a self-help book --- the authors are telling a story. I could read the wiki page on the Wright Bros, but I read David McCullough's "The Wright Brothers" because the writing is graceful and elegant and the storytelling is vivid and captivating. The worst offenders, in my opinion, are the self-help/business books that aspire to long form journalism but are probably better off left as a bullet list on a blogpost. These ones are also infected by the idea that everyone of their bullet points needs a vague connection to some elaborate neuroscientific explanation and a "case study" that is usually some oversimplification. Cal Newport is painfully guilty of this, for an example; but it's everywhere in the self-help genre and especially in "airport" books. (I actually think Newport is a better blogger and occasional NewYorker writer than a book writer. His "insights" aren't that grand.) Fiction, well, I think a long work of fiction is fine as long as the story can handle it. My tastes tend toward florid, "purple", and quite dense prose and descriptions. I like when an author "paints a scene". On the other hand, I find the recent trend of extremely "to the point", stripped down "minimalist" writing that is very common in a lot of contemporary literature (Rooney, for example) and fantasy writing (Sanderson, for example) to be downright boring and comes off as half-baked. There are probably too many 500+pg books because of publishers though. Fantasy has its own obsession with "epics". 200-250pgs is actually a great goldilocks zone that doesn't get published so often nowadays, but should make a comeback. The big publishers hate them though.

WalterBright 2y ago

Haha. Most books are padded or compressed so they fit pretty much the same volume. A paperback can have dense, small type in it, or larger type with wide margins to "puff up" the size. I've also noticed some paperbacks having thicker pages to make it look like there's more material. I suspect books the same size can have a 2:1 difference in the amount of text.

arvinsim 2y ago

Now that we have LLMs, it's possible to trim the fat out of books and condense them to a more concise version.