[ghaff]

Publishers in general want books that are 250+ pages. And that's probably too much for a lot of topics.

The one time I went through a publisher I definitely felt I was padding things. The second edition was better. I took out some of the padding and I fleshed out other topics that deserved it. It still barely made it to the 250-ish page point though.

[specialist]

Do you know what the 250 page target is based on? Knowing the underlying assumptions, metrics, KPIs, or whatever, could be helpful.

[ghaff]

I don't. I assume it's economics in the sense that consumers are probably inclined to pay less for shorter books, there are a lot of largely fixed costs associated with publishing a book, may even be some pedestrian things like reading a title on the spine in a bookstore. Basically you need some starting hardcover or trade paperback price and work back from there. Amazon has doubtless changed some of the economics especially for ebooks. But, historically, you needed a hardcover you could sell for $25.

I've published a couple of fairly short books I didn't really care about charging for and they just wouldn't have been worth it for any publisher to feed into their funnel.

Only somewhat on point but here's something from the late 90s. https://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html