Art is (Too) Long
Henry Farrell says the problem with books is they’re too long. He’s talking about nonfiction, but it goes for fiction too. I understand the impulse on the supply side toward thick books: I myself have witnessed bookstore shoppers choose one book over the other because “this one’s thicker.” (Said out loud in so many words.) And I witnessed a shift in mass-market printing strategies toward using thicker paper, bigger fonts and wider margins. Compare a mass-market paperback from the 1960 or 1970s with a reprint of the same title from the 1980s or later and the difference is stunning. In the earlier era, the publisher was plainly trying to keep the physical size down; in the later era, puffing the same text up like a blowfish.
What interests me is how the ebook era will affect book lengths. Right now, all ebooks look “the same size” on the (virtual) shelf. The Kindle store gives you a “print length” but, at least for me, that’s an abstract fact I take little notice of. Baen Books successful Webscriptions store doesn’t even do that. Perhaps one day ebook vendors will list a book’s word-count instead, but I don’t think that will make as much impression on shoppers as a physical package’s relative bulk does. Also, my Kindle’s progress bar is relative rather than absolute. No matter how long the text, the progress track runs the width of the screen. If you’re a third of the way through a 100,000 word book, the progress bar extends a third of the way across the screen. If you’re a third of the way through a 200,000 word book, likewise.
Every change in “printing” technology/economics has affected the forms of literature. This one will too. I’m not certain it will mean that ebook-era works will have less bloat. These days people buy a lot of books online, also a case where the size of the physical package . . . bulks smaller in their minds. Has there been any trend toward shorter books this decade than the last couple? (Note: NOT a rhetorical question! If you have facts touching this, shout ‘em out please.) But it’s at least possible that ebooks will be shorter books.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
February 10, 2010 @ 10:59 am
I remember Charlie Stross mentioning on his blog that he’d written the first Merchant Princes book to be an 800 to 1000-page monstrosity, because that was what was selling then, but by the time he’d written it the publisher asked him to split it in two.
Comment by Jim Millen —
February 10, 2010 @ 11:21 am
I will confess I’ve been guilty of buying books based on size. Partly this is because I’m a fast reader and a 200 page paperback will only last an hour or two of dedicated reading. Yet at MSRP here in the UK, that book will only be £2-3 less than a book 3 or 4 times longer, which I know will keep me happy for longer.
I feel quite bad about this because I know shorter novels can be outstanding, and often more intense, but when the book budget is finite, it’s hard not to choose quantity over quality.
It will be interesting to see how things develop with e-books. I’m absolutely sure people want to know what they’re getting into when they start a book, but agree that so far there doesn’t seem to be a consistent way to represent this for e-books…
Comment by Greg —
February 10, 2010 @ 11:22 am
My organization’s ebooks are done in PDF, so we still list a page count (generally a bit shorter than the page count for the physical book, since the ebook doesn’t have to worry about niceties like chapters always starting on right-hand pages). People do seem to pay attention to those page counts, at least to the extent of dividing the price by the page count and complaining if the ratio isn’t to their liking.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
February 10, 2010 @ 12:03 pm
I have the same problem with movies. I feel cheated if I drop approx. $10 for a movie ticket and the film is shorter than 2 hours. I know “entertainment minutes/dollar” is a silly way to measure it, but that doesn’t stop me
Comment by Keifus —
February 10, 2010 @ 1:17 pm
I’ll take a shorter book over a longer one, figuring life’s too brief to waste it on unnecessary verbage, and being able to digest a variety of it is nice. But then, I don’t pretend to be a particularly fast reader.
The 70s vintage books you describe, I’ve further found to be more economical in the language, more tightly plotted, and so forth than the later, longer ones. I consider this a good thing (although authors who express themselves better in a longer form aren’t terribly rare), and I’ve long suspected that a shorter format supplies the kind constraint that can inspire creativity. The writer will be limited to only the best possible epxression he or she can come up with.
An optimistic opinion on e-books would be that they will allow a happy world where every story can be exactly the length it needs to be, with no unfair judgements based on shelf space or the ability to hold back a door. A less optimistic prediction is that it will remove some level of generally useful discipline from the artistic process.
Comment by Geof —
February 10, 2010 @ 1:19 pm
Empirical evidence that books have been getting longer:
V.: 492 Pages, 1960s
Gravity’s Rainbow: 760 pages, 1970s
Mason & Dixon: 773 pages, 1990s
Against the Day: 1085 pages, 2000s
Of course I leaving out Pynchon’s short form novels, Crying of lot 49, Vineland, and Inherent Vice (183, 385, 369 pages respectively)
Me, I love long novels, and long as they aren’t wasting the space. GR and ATD above are two of my favorites.
Comment by superflat —
February 10, 2010 @ 1:29 pm
I wonder if book length (in a physical store) is as big a factor as you make it out to be. I would never gift an overly long book, for example, and in fact tend to purchase short books that I know the person will be able to finish. Personally, if I see a short non-fiction book I gravitate towards it, because there’s a more realistic chance I will learn what it has to teach. With fiction I’m basing my decision entirely on my interest in the author or title — I never even consider the length. I do agree, though, that many books are overly long.
Comment by josephdietrich —
February 10, 2010 @ 2:13 pm
I used to like long books, but reading things like Wheel of Time eventually cured me of that habit. So many words to say so little!
I don’t mention it to pick on Wheel of Time specifically, but it just so happens that that series was the first time that I noticed the tendency of some authors start to really love the sound of their own prose and then go on, and on, and on.
Comment by Heather —
February 10, 2010 @ 2:21 pm
I have to admit that I did not purchase a book today because I felt it was too short. It was a 136-page hardback that was retailing for $20 but I could get online for $14. I did a doubletake when I saw the length, then started reading the reviews from readers, which were mixed.
If I had been a longer book with mixed reviews I would have gotten it. Because it was so short, and the reviews were not glowing, I decided to wait.
I too have a limited entertainment budget, and a book 136 pages long would maybe last me an hour, perhaps two. I can get more bang for my buck elsewhere.
Comment by Al —
February 10, 2010 @ 2:25 pm
Kindle progress bar point in the original post is incorrect. The bar may go across the screen, but there is a number written that states on an absolute scale your progress. For example, it’ll say 10% and next to that 232 and on the far right the entire length of the book 2400 or something. This is actually more of an absolute scale than a paper book, since a paper book can have different amounts of text on each page, thus confusing you. I know for example, that Infinite Jest is roughly 2X as long as Anna Karenina, which I would not have been able to know otherwise.
Comment by Michael Whitehouse —
February 10, 2010 @ 2:35 pm
@Geof
Ah, Pynchon. Alas, I was felled at around page 400 when I attempted Gravity’s Rainbow in college. Only one other book did me in: I lost the battle to Anna Karenina at page 600 or so.
Comment by Pete Nibelung —
February 10, 2010 @ 3:52 pm
Oh, it’s all about merchandising psychology. Customers will pay more for a physically larger package. This is especially true when you look at software.
No one will pay $1495 for a DVD in a tyvek envelope (with a pdf manual). No matter what software is on that disk. But put that same disk in a 6″x2″x4″ plastic box with a cardboard insert, holographic seal of authenticity, and printed manual – NOW you’re talkin’. Same product.
True Story: In 1989, while working for a dotcom, we had purchased a smaller company. We re-named their product, (added “Pro” to the end) changed their price from $99 to $499, and sales roughly tripled. Enterprise customers would not take the $99 software seriously. We raised the price, and increased sales. It was really that simple. I would even say tech support quality declined; given it went from small-company individual skilled phone support, to large-company call-center monkeys reading from a script.
Or, to put it another way, I think there was a famous author (heh) who said; “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Comment by individualfrog —
February 10, 2010 @ 11:43 pm
It’s interesting to read this because “books are too big to carry” is often a reason cited to buy ebooks. That wasn’t true in the past. I have many very old hardcover books (mostly my grandfathers) in a size which you only find in novelty gift books of photos and quotations anymore. Pocket-sized, like, small enough to actually fit in a suit jacket pocket. I have a copy of Spenser’s complete works (including the Faery Queene) which is not much bigger than that.
In Japan, they still sell tiny little books, and many if not most books are split into two or three volumes. I think it’s because it’s a mass-transit commuter culture and portability is very important, but that’s just a guess.
Comment by Ray —
February 11, 2010 @ 6:19 pm
I’m more amazed by the “will only watch 2 hour+ movies” comment. Which is kind of odd, because I think I watch plenty of movies that really are over 2 hours, but my immediate mental association is ‘long movie’ = SFX blockbuster = complete crap.
Comment by Maynard Handley —
February 12, 2010 @ 6:36 pm
I continue to be amazed that the publishing and entertainment worlds STILL do not understand that for most consumers, what is in short supply in the US is TIME not dollars. Thus their job, as editors and device manufacturers should be continually to ask “how does this save the consumer’s time”, not “how does this save the consumer’s dollars”.
For editors, this means that books (I am particularly interested in non-fiction) should say what needs to be said rapidly and effectively. I have switched to mostly hearing an author talk about their book, rather than reading it, because being forced to condense their argument into an hour long talk seems to provide them with the focus that writing does not. Of course there is a place for all the material in a book that cannot go into a talk — the examples proving the point, the exact numbers etc. But is it necessary to intertwine the two so aggressively that the only way to learn the important points in the book is to read all 600 pages?
For CE and computer manufacturers, it means that your devices should make a big deal of time compression. The DVR people understand this to some extent, with commercial skipping; but only to some extent. Apple understands it to some extent, providing the ability on iPod nano’s to play spoken word material at 1.25x without pitch shifting; but Apple again only understand it to some extent. This facility only works with a small amount of audio material (specifically it doesn’t work for mp3s and podcasts), it has a UI that becomes ever crappier as iPod nano generations increase, it doesn’t work with video, it doesn’t offer multiple speeds, etc etc.
And Apple keeps going backwards on this. While the previous QT Player offers variable speed playback for audio and video (and I use this all the time), neither iTunes, nor DVD Player, nor QT Player X, nor Front Row offer this facility.
Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, for all Apple’s lameness, they are ahead of the curve here, with Zune et al, as fara s I can tell, not even providing Apple’s lame offerings.
I honestly do not know what is going on here — the gap between what could be provided, what is provided, and what people could use is astonishing beyond belief.
Comment by Maynard Handley —
February 12, 2010 @ 6:42 pm
I can’t talk to the mass market psychology of business software, but the claim above is demonstrably not true for Mathematica. Mathematica is now, what, something like $3000 for a Windows or Mac version, about $900 to upgrade from version 6 to version 7, and is bought as a download — even less material than buying a DVD in an envelope.
I don’t know the state of the art for other professional level software — Photoshop, Aperture, Maya etc. Do those still come in boxes, or are they bought as downloads?
Comment by RobLL —
February 12, 2010 @ 8:49 pm
Pet peeve for years, I read almost entirely non-fiction. Can’t begin to tell you how many 150 page books I have tried to read that were disguised in 300 page tomes.