The
New York Times Sunday Book Review
(August 11) section recently reviewed a number of books, as it usually
does. The books chosen for review were
no shorter than 217 pages and as long as 722.
A good number were 300+, 400+, and 500+ pages. Is there a bias against shorter-format books?
How
many pages must a book be to be a book?
In the era of e-books and digitally formatted books, a book can have any
size page, be any length, and use any typeface.
It can have thousands of photos – or none at all. When you read on a device, you lose sight of
traditional book dimensions, but when you have a printed book that is smaller
than your standard 200-page, 6x9 tome, you feel like you’re holding a magazine.
Books
should not be seen as providing value based on size, but rather on the quality
of the content. But in a deflated book
industry that prices books well below their true value, maybe the shorter book
is the way to go. Authors can take what
would’ve been a normal length book that sells for $9.99 on Amazon and break it
up into three books at $4.99 each.
Consumers
like books that are shorter, provided they feel that they get something
complete and of substance. Book girth
doesn’t equate to pleasure. Just good
writing does.
On
the other hand, a book ceases to be a book at some point. An essay of 30 pages is just that. It doesn’t have the right to be labeled a
book -- or does it?
Do
reviewers ignore e-books, self published books, or shorter-length books? There certainly is a bias with newspaper and
magazine book reviewers. It will
eventually change.
Should reviews of shorter books be short? Should they be in a certain section within the book review section? If shorter books become popular and normalized, will we see more of them?
Some
authors serialize their books and sell them chapter by chapter. Soon a chapter-size piece of writing will be
the book.
Due
to technology, books are changing in how they look, in their length, their
price, their content, and their publication date. But the competition for books and those who
consume books have changed too.
Will shorter books catch on? In the long run, they likely will be in high demand.
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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog
are his alone and not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book promoter.
You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when
discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©
2013
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