[xondono]

It’s a problem of how book publishing works.

Most of these self-help books are made because publishers can sell them, mostly on the name of the author.

At the same time, most authors could condense their “insights” into a 3-4 page article. The issue is publishing a 4 page article is not profitable, there’s too much fixed cost, and too little market price to absorb it.

The logical result is publishers that insist that a book must be extended to ~300 pages to be really profitable, and authors that pad their books with cherry-picked examples, anecdotes, “case studies”, and whatever else they can to get the book published.

[ianburrell]

I wonder if ebooks would help with length of books. There are short stories, to novellas, to novels on Amazon for fiction. Novels are definitely more popular partly people complain about the value of shorter fiction.

Self-help books could try having shorter ebooks. They would have to forgo printed copies since pamphlets don't work in the store.