Short books versus long books, what are the pros and cons to each?
We’re glad you asked.
Perhaps you’re looking for a new book to read and you’re trying to determine what length it should be. Or maybe you’re trying to decipher what the advantages are of reading a short book versus a long book in general.
We can certainly tell you that there pros and cons of each. We’re going to briefly discuss these with you. Some of these pros and cons will likely make you look at books in a different light.
For the purpose of this article, we will refer to short books as anything less than 100 pages, and long books as anything more than this.
Now, let’s begin.
Short Books
Especially since the release of e-readers such as the Kindle, short books sales have become a larger chunk of the market.
We see this as a very good thing because it gives the customer more opportunity to find exactly what they’re looking for. More accessibility for customers generally results in more satisfaction.
There are many advantages of shorter books that you likely haven’t considered. We will go through them in detail, along with some of the cons.
Pros of Short Books
- Easier to Finish: Yeah, we know this is obvious, but it’s worth stating. It’s easy to finish a short book. The overwhelming majority of readers do not finish the books that they purchase. There are simply too many distractions out there.
- Easier to Reread: We believe that this is one of the most underrated advantages of shorter books. It is much easier to review all of the information in a short nonfiction book. This can be extremely beneficial to the reader. If you are reading a nonfiction book, you almost always have to go back to have a method to review the information to get everything out of it. It’s simply easier to do with a short book.
- Cheaper: This should be obvious. Short books are cheaper because there’s less information and they don’t take as long to write. Therefore, you can get a good introduction or a good in-depth viewpoint on a particular subject for a cheap price.
- Excellent Introduction to a subject: Short books give you the ability to test the waters of any subject before you truly dive into it. You can read a short book on Meditation, for instance, before you decide to purchase a full book or to take a meditation class. You’ll learn much sooner whether or not you like the subject, as well.
- Niche Information: Shorter books often cover niche information that may not need a full book. For instance, How To Make Money With Twitter, How to Market Kindle books, etc. This is not always the case, as you can often find full-fledged manuals for a lot of niche information. But this often is true.
- Talented, Lesser Known Authors: Short books are often written by talented part-time authors that don’t have big publishing deals. This means that anyone can write a book with less barrier to entry, and of course, anyone can read it.
- To the Point: Short books often have less fluff than a long book. Therefore, they have to get to the point quicker to teach you about the subject they discuss.
Cons of Short Books
- Less Depth: Short books, in general, give you less depth into a subject. This is generally true unless they are written about a very specific niche topic that requires previous knowledge of the subject discussed. Since there’s obviously fewer pages in the book, there’s generally less room to go in as deep and branch the information out.
- More Amateur (at times): Since shorter books are sometimes written by less experienced authors, sometimes the books just aren’t as good. However, you can easily avoid this by reading reviews before you make your purchase.
- Possibly No Physical Copy: If you’re a reader who loves to have physical copies of your books, you’ll find that shorter books aren’t sold in physical format. This is not always true, but it is more likely with shorter books instead of longer books.
Long Books
As you can see, we really think short books are great. So now that we’ve discussed short books, we can draw up a comparison between short and long books.
Long books have one major advantage: depth. Despite the fact that short books can be pretty great, a solid in-depth long book on the information makes a good long book worth the read. And in the case of fantasy or fiction, a long book can truly immerse you in the world.
Pros of Longer Books
- More Depth: As we’ve mentioned, the biggest benefit of longer books is that they can go into more depth into the story or the subject. This reason alone is often the best reason to buy a longer book if it is well-written and isn’t made longer with fluff. And if you’re reading a fiction book, the depth can truly immerse you in the story.
- More Likely To Be Written by a Big Name: Most renowned experts don’t write very short books. Almost every famous figure or author (or ghost writer) usually writes a bare minimum of 150 pages. This certainly doesn’t mean that experts don’t write shorter books, but this is almost always true about any bigger author or celebrity.
Cons of Longer Books
- Much More to Review: As we’ve said, you should go back and review the information in non-fiction books. This is because you simply cannot learn something just by reading it once. You must read, make the information yours, put the information into practice, and re-read it again as necessary. Long books have a ton of information in them, so they take much more time to review. This often discourages readers from going back and reviewing the content in the first place.
- Fluff: Many long books are loaded with a lot of fluff. Even some of our favorite books are guilty of doing this. You often find this complaint made in many book reviews. Fluff may help the book’s message stick a little better, but frankly, it isn’t necessary overall.
- More Expensive: This is obvious. Longer books are more expensive because they have more information and take more time to write. Books are cheap in general so this is all relative.
- Harder to Finish: This, we believe, is a significant disadvantage. We live in a time where everything is constantly competing for your attention. Most people can hardly sit down for a few minutes without getting distracted. Thus, it is naturally more difficult to finish a longer book.
Conclusion
You would think from the list of pros versus cons in this article that short books are simply better than longer books.
As many advantages as short books have, this is certainly not always the case. A great book is a great book. So really, whether a long or short term book is better depends on the book itself, but there are certain advantages to both.
That said, we generally prefer short books, unless a longer book can keep up with the quality throughout the entire book. There are simply many advantages to shorter books, as we listed above. But we certainly don’t discriminate; a great book is a great book!
Anyway, this is all we have to say about this subject. We hope you enjoyed this article. If so, be sure to subscribe to our email list to get many awesome self-improvement tips, plus discounts and promotions on our new books. And be sure to check out our books, we’re sure you’ll love what we have to offer.
