[freddie_mercury]

Amazon tried to disrupt this with their Kindle Singles program with books in the 75-100 page range. It is still technically around but consumers clearly voted against it.

Despite constant complaints about the padding in many non-fiction books (not just business) there's clearly a silent majority who feel like "If I'm going to bother, ugh, opening a book then I want it to be as thick as possible".

For that matter, you see a similar dynamic on the fiction side too with novellas and short stories bring far distant in popularity to novels. (Even though those same people have zero issues watching 22 minute TV episodes.)

[graemep]

There are some very nice short print books suchas OUP's "Very short introduction to...". Penguin (?) used to do single short stories and extracts of biographies etc. many years ago. I do not think they do any more, but I have some.

Then there was the delightful Bluffer's Guides series.

I like shorter novels and short stories myself, especially in SF where ideas matter.