You also have readers like my daughter, who walk into the library and looks for the fattest book on the shelves, because she wants it to last longer before she has to come back and check out another book.
@@2ToRambleI think one thing you guys missed was the genre of book. Someone 2 decades before might have read 13-14 books but maybe half were non-fiction, whereas today someone reading 13-14 books will just read straight up porn books. The value of these two is like night and day.
Good question. Why they are that long? Neil Gaiman answered this back then. (Who he writes still with a pen.) He said when the pen was changed with the typewriter the novellas length doubled. (He worked as an editor back then.) Now following his explanation why and how it’s pretty obvious. He said that people tend to write down everything they just think at the very moment and that’s it. When they used a pen they thought about the words and sentences because they couldn’t just change it that easily in the notebook. If they looked back they saw what nonsense they wrote. And it was a longer explanation. But you can guess it.
honestly editors are not doing their jobs anymore. so many books full of things that are not interesring, not plot relevant, and not good prose. for all that ill complain that Tolkiens obsession with foliage bores me green, it is a well written obsession.
@@Harley24986 i think so. someone dropped a theory that bc Audible is pretty much an audiobook monopoly, and u pay for a credit, and 1 credit = 1 book, and stats show that sales increase dramaticslly around the 20 hr mark, so ppl pick to get more for their money.
@Harley24986 yes, and some stats indicate that it's Amazon's fault. Audible operates on credits, 1 credit = 1 audiobook, no matter the length of it or the cost of the ebook/pocket. there is a markant uptick in sales on audiobooks that tip the 20 hr mark bc ppl need to feel like they're getting their moneys worth. 💰 can't say I was immune to that impulse.
I would like to add the rise in usage of audiobooks as well like people dont have to actually only set aside some time for only reading so the audiobooks could go longer and longer
Recently I have been reading Japanese light novels and The Princes of Amber that are very short books. Let me just say that it feels good just reading books that respect your time and leave out things that truly don't need to be covered for a story to be good. Mastering world building in just a few short lines is probably something a lot of authors should start doing.
Michael Moorcock and Robert E Howard did an excellent job of creating massive fantasy worlds and great characters in books that were less than 200 pages in length.
Had a good anecdotal example of this recently. Took my way longer to read my first discworld book than my first 600 page book because my version of equal rites didnt have chapters.
I think strictly saying I’m doing at the least 25 pages a day of a book makes it easier not needing to feel like I have to finish a chapter it’s just like pausing a movie if you need to
Fantasy definitely has more of a problem with bloat than other genres but books like that have pretty much always existed. Forget King, even Dickens and Tolstoy sometimes wrote beefier stories than they intended due to their format and/or audience.
Aww can’t wait to meet Austin’s grandma! ❤ There is a physical limit for printing big books. Ryan Cahill has spoken about it for publishing his last book in The Bound and The Broken series. I believe paper prices and printing costs have gone up as well in the cost of living crisis so this may affect the size of some physical books in the next block of years the study looks at.
An addition to this convo is how Audible works. Because Audible is basically a monopoly for audiobooks, and because it works via credits, it makes longer books seem like higher value. You are charged a set amount for a credit and can then use that on ANY book. So people like to use credits on longer books because it is perceived as higher value. Obviously shorter works will sell, but genericlaly this holds. The audiobook publiehrs have a lot of data which shows a major increase in sales at 15hrs+ The higher payouts seem to top off at about 20 hours. So if you're book is 20hrs (approx 200,000 words) you'll eek out the most per credit sale as it stands. Being longer doesn't payout more but the value for credit thing still kicks in. A boxset of my first series has sold a TON of copies in audio because it's 46 hours long. I'm not sure that major publishers consciously think about this but I do think it's a contributing factor, especially in SFF. We have long books already and this system encourages us to write maybe that little bit more. It may also be the case that in audio, longer books selling more means those are the most visible books, meaning they sell more, meaning our perception of the length of books (in that format at least) is increasing because that's the stuff we see/hear about.
I don’t mind a long book but I feel like everything is a trilogy or a series. This is a very broad generalization obviously because I know how I feel doesn’t reflect reality. I don’t mind a series sometimes but also I like one off books too. It feels daunting to get into a long book if it is book one of 3 or 4,5,6 etc especially if they’re all long books.
Started this video directly after watching your episode with Bookborn, and the way I laughed when you addressed the studies and, "why I think this one is the most credible," having just seen her give you a whole thorough take on stats and the importance of taking into account how data is gathered. Impeccable unintentional editing.
It also matters what time period you are talking about and when you start the comparison. Victorian novels were much longer than the novels of the novels of 1999 - 2023. Middlemarch is 316,059 words long; War and Peace is 560,000-587,000 words long, depending on the translation. Little Dorritt is 359,976 words long. The Count of Monte Christo is 464,162 words long. Don Quixote is 430,269 words long, David Copperfield is 360,231, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo is 530,982. So it really depends on where you start. If you look at the Victorian Period, then books are actually much shorter now (i.e. books have gotten shorter). Even Lord of the Rings, written 87 years ago, is 576,459 words long (it is one book, published in 3 volumes), and is longer than most current books.
I think it also depends on the culture/country too. As you've mentioned above, a lot of French and Russian novels are well known to be LONG for English readers but seems to be a normal length for those countries. Also a lot were serialized first (Dickens, Phantom of the Opera etc) before being bond into one novel, so (like fanfic) they could be longer because people only consumed a little every week.
I'm definitely in the boat of liking longer books. Characters are most important to me, way over overall story. The only short fantasy novel I ever got into was Kings of the Wyld, which didn't need to be long since it was all based in pretty established fantasy/D&D world structure
300-400 pages is the sweet spot for me with books. If it needs to be a dumbbell, it better be holding my attention on the edge of my seat the entire time. I'm not here for filler. Did I enjoy reading 1200 pages of Sanderson? Yes. Did I enjoy reading 800 pages of Crescent City? Absolutely not. That aside, I feel like we may have a case of longer books sell for a higher price and if less people are indeed reading, then they need to make their money somehow. Just a thought.
Grazing the book stores and I have a theory, a thicker book is more likely to stand out and thus catch your eye on the shelf. Improving the odds of purchase
I think another reason why books are getting are so longer but only in relation to bigger / famous writers: there's a big discussion recently that they're not being edited, because they're already successful and a household name so why edit them down when they're gunna sell well regardless. And I think to a certain extent this is true. The books that are blowing up (thanks to booktok and marketing) are also often included in this discussion too because these publishers know they're gunna make bank on these books so (the conspiracy is) they're not bothering to edit nor shorten these books.
Per the internet: "How many words is the Foundation trilogy? Here are the word counts for the books: Foundation - 70,407. Foundation and Empire - 77,451. Second Foundation - 72,021."
People also retreated to fantasy during the depression. There is a reason wizard of Oz killed it in the 30s. It's a known fact - fantastical stories do better in times of economic strife.
I can agree that writing by hand for creating stories wears out your hand. Wrote 2 short stories earlier this year. total of 55 pages and I'd be sore the next day after workn on it..bc I had to get the ideas down while they were there. Great point
I feel called out. I am doing something else while listening to this video 🤣. Not well because I got distracted and started writing this comment. But I am totally multitasking. Two thoughts that don't necessarily go together. 1) I went to a Tamora Pierce interview once and she talked about how her publisher would not let her have a book over 200 pages because they didn't think kids would read them. And then Harry Potter came out and suddenly she was allowed to publish whatever length book she needed to to tell the story she wanted to tell. 2) I always find it interesting to look at the average length of scene cuts in movies over time when you're talking about attention span. Stick your average teenager in front of Ben-Hur and they will find it boring because all of the scenes are significantly longer than movies today.
I've never watched tiktok and never will. I also prefer long-form content here on YT. Also I'm usually doing something while watching/listening.. working, driving, cooking, doing chores, walking, shopping, etc. If I'm just going to sit for a period time then I'm reading.. and my preference is to read physically versus other formats, for several reasons. I only listen to audiobooks when I want to physically read but can't (working, driving, etc). When I read a series, I think of all the books as being the one main story and rate it as such.
Around 8:30 the Gallup poll indicating that people are reading less is brought up but you say that seems in conflict with the data showing books are getting longer. I don' t think that's the case at all. The Gallup poll says that people are reading fewer books, it doesn't say that they're spending LESS time reading. If books are getting longer and longer a natural result would be that unless people increase the time they spend reading, the number of books they read will naturally decline. If I spend 500 hours per year reading books, I'll get through a lot more if the average book takes 7 hours to read vs 70 hours to read.
Definitely agree - I might’ve miscommunicated that! The attention span and people reading less books points were general assumptions I had before diving into this topic - by the end we explored why that was the case and I definitely agree with ya
As not only a book reviewer but an author I find that the huge reason that books are getting so much longer is that publishing houses see it as a great way to make more money. And then authors are force to write another book that's just as long. I won't do that! I have way too much pride.
I hauled two pallets just filled with copies of Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer across the nation so I could get to my computer and listen to this episode
I wonder how much of the “less books read” stat is correlates with the length in books? I have been reading consistently this year, but because they’re all tomes (thanks Words of Radiance) my end of year book count will be low. If on average the books are about 80 pages longer, the math could line up there to drop yearly book amounts by 1-4 or so.
Could some of the longer books be a product of the authors contract with the publishers? Say the publisher gives the author a 3 book contract and the author is then trying to cram 5 books of material into those 3 books.
So here are my thoughts: reading trends have changed. Now that writing a book is much easier (and putting it in front of the audience), publishers and authors can clearly see what does well and what doesn't. I think this pushes authors to at least subconsciously get inspired to emulate these trends. I'm not just talking about things like hard magic systems, vampires, magic schools, etc; my point rather pertains to things like relatable characters, morally gray heroes, no overly purple prose. Where in Foundation the focus isn't really on the characters but rather the ideas, now in Red Rising Darrow is definitely a drawing part of the story so the author will naturally draw his characterization and struggles out more. Does this make sense? I think that in the past characters' psyche's just weren't so clearly mulled over like they are now (even if we look at things like Jane Austen's or F. Scott Fitzgerald, their characters just seem different, not worse or better, to the ones today). That's my 2 cents.
Ok, hear me out. Audible credits incentivize buying the longest books. I like short books when I’m at home reading, but I’ve got 10 hour shifts so I want a long book. I’m 13 books through the Wheel of Time. Not sure I could’ve done it without Michael Kramer and Kate Reading.
As someone who writes for fun, I often hear people saying that authors can write many pages for very little; write many thousand pages or extend any scene to 50 pages. I find that impossible. If I have a scene in mind, that's 2 pages, no more. I'm currently writing a book where there's tons of stuff happening, but I can't get it to be the lenght of a novel.
Alternative explanations: As society becomes more shallow, we want greater depth in our books. As our world is more unpredictable and dangerous we want the comfort of a long and developed alternative reality.
Your videos make Mondays better. Also, you should read Realm of the Elderlings, at least if you want great characters. I'm interested to see what you would think. Also, my birthday is in April too, I suppose I'm in good company as a Taurus with Austin. (My birthday is actually World Book day, which I'm very proud of.)
Per the internet: "Book-length averages: Something else to factor in is the genre. For example, thrillers tend to be shorter, coming in at around 70,000-90,000 whereas fantasy novels are usually 90,000 and up."
I'm not finished listening the Podcast but I have this idea Is not that people is reading less books, is that nowdays books are longer so you have to invest more time in a single book that you can invest in multiple books. For example we have Diskworld where all the books are very short and we have The Stormlight Archive where all the books are very long. I make some math and technically the 41 Diskworld books are equivalente to 6 or 7 books of Stormlight Length. So If in a year I read 41 books of 200 to 300 pages I'm basically reading the same as if I read 6 or 7 books of 1200 to 1400 pages. So I really don't think people are reading lees.
I am really looking forward to when you guys start review ASOIAF. It's easily my favorite book series and would love to hear you guys discuss each book in depth!
@@2ToRamble but hey that may be a good video topic. Web novels and there place in fantasy. Also the people that do try to read this series are divided on the mc. Some think shes dumb and makes terrible choices and others think shes realistic. So like how realistic should an mc be? .... Mostly i just want to see yalls thoughts on this story lol. But thats no different then any fantasy nerd haha
That would be true if the added material was actually something worth adding. What we get instead is more filler, dumber dialogue, and repetitive descriptions (one of the worst offenders here being Sanderson). I would only want more from a series like ASOIAF, because Martin actually delves deeper into the lore of the world rather than just add useless shit.
There is something to be said for revelling in the world that is built. It is pleasurable to re-read WOT more than any series I am aware of, in my limited view. I found it great to re-read The Slog of WOT books, enjoying getting to know the characters more, instead of racing thru to find out What Happens Next. VICTORY TO ALL @@alb0zfinest
I would also like to add that authors do this for monetary gain. In the romance community a lot of the books I read are on Kindle Unlimited. Authors get paid via pages turned. The longer the book, the more money they would receive.
The contradiction of shorter attention spans and longer books can be explained by fetishism. There's an aura of prestige around large books. In this age, that prestige increases, exactly because it runs counter to everyone's cultural habits. The writing has also become much simpler, so the time to read these books might not have increased as much as the page count.
21:11 Genuine life hack. Of course, there's always going to be bad actors who try to manipulate others, but even in regular conversation this is beyond valuable. You could say "the sky is blue," but if you sound small or otherwise uncertain in saying it, people can (and likely will) feel uncertain in taking to your words. Not necessarily because they're untruthful, the sky is indeed blue, but rather it seems as though there's something being left unsaid, or that you don't know if the sky is blue, and therefore you're stupid.
I believe some of the bigger reason why books are getting bigger is because 1. Audiobooks 2. Worldbuilding more and more people are getting lost in these worlds. 3. More complex stories and characters. I'm might be a smob but I don't like older sci-fi & fantasy.
Maybe people are reading less books because the books have gotten longer and they are spending more time on each one, and not reading as many per year… idk 😂
Just to set the record straight (pun intended), the dictaphone was a recording device. The first versions recorded your voice on wax cylinders. They were the forerunners for your average pocket recorder. So you recorded something that needed to be documented and someone could put it down on paper later on. Thanks for an interesting discussion. I am of two minds about long or short books. I do think that the lower page count fits me better but if a novel is less than 200 pages, I might feel like there isn't enough room to develop ideas or characters. I'd say 400 pages is perfect for me. There are simply too many novels I just can't get into nowadays. I get tired of this or that. I only have a couple of authorships that I follow closely ( C. J. Cherryh and Sharon Lee & Steve Miller) and the rest is more or less blips on my radar. I've tried the first few books in many of the 'modern' fantasy series but haven't felt like finishing them. I am still on the lookout for something written during the first two decades of the fantasy boom that I will find to be my go to series. I do find some new novels to be good (Margaret Rogerson's Sorcery of Thorns, for instance and Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Diving Universe SF novels) but I'm having a hard time finding and staying with new authors.
Great video, you all uncovered quite a few "whys" I hadn’t thought of (EX. more free time). I know personally, the availability of audiobooks is the only reason I can consume long fantasy books. Did you guys see Sanderson talking about how publishers want him to publish like Will Wight? They prefer smaller books.
@@2ToRamble something along the lines of... his publisher would prefer five 200 page books rather than one 1,000 page book. They'd prefer each of Stormlight's "Parts" be their own book. He mentions that the Cradle series is exactly what they want.
Richard already answered it really well at the beginning. Books are longer because modern prose isnt as literary, its much more colloquial. This transition probably was aided boy technology. You cannot possibly imagine somone writing the way of kings on scrolls.
Idk, if a book is exceptional, I really don’t mind settling down for a few days with a 10 pound tome. But I also do love short books as a palate cleanser, something I can get through in a day or less.
Also bigger books look good on shelves. People on social media want to be seen as readers, not actually read. So when they do those shelf tours the long books look really good.
I think we can also compare it to the popularity of tv series adaptations in recent years: more and more stories gain tv series adaptations which are longer and more detailed that movie adaptations 🤔
One part of me thinks that I like short books more, because I can find out how it ends quicker and read more stories But then I’m mostly reading long books, because I enjoy them more and get so attached to the characters and the world
We aren't bound by as many limitations because of technology. Not only do we have more binding options for physical books, but the actual writing process stands to enable longer books, potentially even obfuscating the real length as the author writes.
Hi. Just discovered your podcast. You should do an interview with Grandma in progress of LOTR. What she thinks so far and what she's looking forward to. Then do a followup interview after finishing it.
I love big fantasy books. Especially when the story is great. I remember getting through The Way Of Kings and Words of Radiance and happy they were that big. The payoff is so worth.
What about the factor that more readers are reading on Kindle vs a physical book. Therefore authors & publisher dont have to worry about costs of publishing physical books, and thereby authors can write the stories at the length & details they really want to. But I am sure yall have addressed later in thid video that I didnt get around to while writing this😅
Neil Stevenson wrote all his books by hand the first draft which is crazy because his books are massive! Snow crash is only 550 but borque cycle is 3000 anthem, and crypotonomicom is like 900
My grandma was the best cook too! Never went by a recipe, it was all in her head. If I tried to do that, I'm pretty sure I'd accidentally poison people, lol!
(let's see if you guys talk about this after I keep playing the video lol) But I think the thing about people are reading on average fewer books a year, yet the books are longer makes sense. What if people aren't actually reading less time wise, but because it's taking them longer to get through each book they're reading less books in the same amount of time?
I don’t mind a bigger book, if it’s broken up into shorter chapters or at least broken up into sections within the chapter. So it’s easier for me to read more or less as needed.
If you read 14 books (in 2000) that are 63 pages shorter than in 2024, that is the equivalent of 882 pages; which would make up the difference between 14 books in the past and 12 books now (12 books that are 63 pages longer means you are reading the equivalent of 883 more pages). So, 14 books that are (on average) 63 pages shorter, works out to BE THE SAME AS 12 books that are 883 total pages longer. People read fewer books now, but the books they are reading are LONGER. Same number of total pages.
Since the studies you mentioned used page counts instead of word counts to show the increasing lengths of books, could formatting differences such as font size or margins also have contributed?
I'm writing my own series that I'm hoping to publish some day and personally, I'm shooting for 300 pages average, 400 max. The 200s like Narnia are too short for me, you can't get as deep a story as I'm going for, and Stephen King or Dune level at 500-600 is too long. I don't have THAT complicated a story to tell. 300-400 has proven to be a comfortable length so far, plus some of the books I have of that length are just more comfortable to look at and hold. Not magazine thin, but also not brick thick. I personally like reading longer books because of the complexity, but I just don't like writing them.
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Thank you Displate for sponsoring this episode!! For 22-33% off go to Displate.com use code “2ToRamble” at checkout!
You also have readers like my daughter, who walk into the library and looks for the fattest book on the shelves, because she wants it to last longer before she has to come back and check out another book.
🙋♀️ or my daughter who chooses books based on how long the SERIES is, because she wants to live in that world for as long as possible.
You’re telling me we’re NOT discussing Brandon Sanderson’s favourite pasta this week??
Linguini
Must not have watched the full video
@@michaelgionti9988 I mean... I did, so what did I miss?
Noodle talk. @63:29 @@rextitan
It’s macaroni
So glad I found this podcast. These are the exact discussions I was looking for on books and reading.
Thanks a ton 🙏
Except for when you realise Austin thinks Hyperion is overrated 🙄
@@matthewsutherland1028 dont worry, Richard bullies me for this all the time 😭
@@2ToRambleI think one thing you guys missed was the genre of book. Someone 2 decades before might have read 13-14 books but maybe half were non-fiction, whereas today someone reading 13-14 books will just read straight up porn books. The value of these two is like night and day.
The larger the book the better the value of Audible credits.
Exactly. That was my first thought too.
I read that Kindle Unlimited authors get paid based on page count.
Good question. Why they are that long? Neil Gaiman answered this back then. (Who he writes still with a pen.) He said when the pen was changed with the typewriter the novellas length doubled. (He worked as an editor back then.) Now following his explanation why and how it’s pretty obvious. He said that people tend to write down everything they just think at the very moment and that’s it. When they used a pen they thought about the words and sentences because they couldn’t just change it that easily in the notebook. If they looked back they saw what nonsense they wrote. And it was a longer explanation. But you can guess it.
honestly editors are not doing their jobs anymore. so many books full of things that are not interesring, not plot relevant, and not good prose. for all that ill complain that Tolkiens obsession with foliage bores me green, it is a well written obsession.
@@blah914 This. I'm making an assumption here that the less editing done, the longer the book, the more money to be made perhaps?
@@Harley24986 i think so. someone dropped a theory that bc Audible is pretty much an audiobook monopoly, and u pay for a credit, and 1 credit = 1 book, and stats show that sales increase dramaticslly around the 20 hr mark, so ppl pick to get more for their money.
@@blah914Plus the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is shorter than some single fantasy novels even with all the infamous foliage.
@Harley24986 yes, and some stats indicate that it's Amazon's fault. Audible operates on credits, 1 credit = 1 audiobook, no matter the length of it or the cost of the ebook/pocket. there is a markant uptick in sales on audiobooks that tip the 20 hr mark bc ppl need to feel like they're getting their moneys worth. 💰 can't say I was immune to that impulse.
Can't believe that Austin's grandma is going to be the one that convinces me to finally start LoTR 😂
YES!
I would like to add the rise in usage of audiobooks as well like people dont have to actually only set aside some time for only reading so the audiobooks could go longer and longer
When I see a big fat chunky book, I say to myself “common baby, be mine” I love big books and cannot lie.
Recently I have been reading Japanese light novels and The Princes of Amber that are very short books. Let me just say that it feels good just reading books that respect your time and leave out things that truly don't need to be covered for a story to be good. Mastering world building in just a few short lines is probably something a lot of authors should start doing.
Michael Moorcock and Robert E Howard did an excellent job of creating massive fantasy worlds and great characters in books that were less than 200 pages in length.
Light novels are not defined by page or size. Light novels are defined by easy to read and having illustrations. Among other things.
@@jrpgnation6375 99% are literally short. I read a lot of them and own a lot of them. The ones that break the mold are very few.
Attention span to me seems to be more akin to chapter size. Longer chapters murder my attention span.
that's so real
Had a good anecdotal example of this recently. Took my way longer to read my first discworld book than my first 600 page book because my version of equal rites didnt have chapters.
I think strictly saying I’m doing at the least 25 pages a day of a book makes it easier not needing to feel like I have to finish a chapter it’s just like pausing a movie if you need to
Fantasy definitely has more of a problem with bloat than other genres but books like that have pretty much always existed. Forget King, even Dickens and Tolstoy sometimes wrote beefier stories than they intended due to their format and/or audience.
Definitely true!
Historical Fiction/Historical Fantasy has the same problem too!!
In fairness, they were paid by the number of words and published in chapters, not while books.
Aww can’t wait to meet Austin’s grandma! ❤
There is a physical limit for printing big books. Ryan Cahill has spoken about it for publishing his last book in The Bound and The Broken series.
I believe paper prices and printing costs have gone up as well in the cost of living crisis so this may affect the size of some physical books in the next block of years the study looks at.
The synchronized cursing is the energy I needed this morning.
Wake up G*DDAMNIT!
I LOVE it when you two ramble about topics like this one. Great video guys!
Thankyou a ton!!
An addition to this convo is how Audible works. Because Audible is basically a monopoly for audiobooks, and because it works via credits, it makes longer books seem like higher value. You are charged a set amount for a credit and can then use that on ANY book. So people like to use credits on longer books because it is perceived as higher value. Obviously shorter works will sell, but genericlaly this holds. The audiobook publiehrs have a lot of data which shows a major increase in sales at 15hrs+
The higher payouts seem to top off at about 20 hours. So if you're book is 20hrs (approx 200,000 words) you'll eek out the most per credit sale as it stands. Being longer doesn't payout more but the value for credit thing still kicks in. A boxset of my first series has sold a TON of copies in audio because it's 46 hours long.
I'm not sure that major publishers consciously think about this but I do think it's a contributing factor, especially in SFF. We have long books already and this system encourages us to write maybe that little bit more.
It may also be the case that in audio, longer books selling more means those are the most visible books, meaning they sell more, meaning our perception of the length of books (in that format at least) is increasing because that's the stuff we see/hear about.
This is great insight - did not know this!! Thank you for commenting this 🤝
thats a great point!
I don’t mind a long book but I feel like everything is a trilogy or a series. This is a very broad generalization obviously because I know how I feel doesn’t reflect reality. I don’t mind a series sometimes but also I like one off books too. It feels daunting to get into a long book if it is book one of 3 or 4,5,6 etc especially if they’re all long books.
Started this video directly after watching your episode with Bookborn, and the way I laughed when you addressed the studies and, "why I think this one is the most credible," having just seen her give you a whole thorough take on stats and the importance of taking into account how data is gathered. Impeccable unintentional editing.
😁
It also matters what time period you are talking about and when you start the comparison. Victorian novels were much longer than the novels of the novels of 1999 - 2023. Middlemarch is 316,059 words long; War and Peace is 560,000-587,000 words long, depending on the translation. Little Dorritt is 359,976 words long. The Count of Monte Christo is 464,162 words long. Don Quixote is 430,269 words long, David Copperfield is 360,231, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo is 530,982. So it really depends on where you start. If you look at the Victorian Period, then books are actually much shorter now (i.e. books have gotten shorter). Even Lord of the Rings, written 87 years ago, is 576,459 words long (it is one book, published in 3 volumes), and is longer than most current books.
Yes but you're forgetting the longer Victorian novels were three volume novels, so they were the equivalent of trilogies.
@@virginiaweir-hj1rt Regardless of the number of volumes a novel is published in, the word count is the same.
I think it also depends on the culture/country too. As you've mentioned above, a lot of French and Russian novels are well known to be LONG for English readers but seems to be a normal length for those countries. Also a lot were serialized first (Dickens, Phantom of the Opera etc) before being bond into one novel, so (like fanfic) they could be longer because people only consumed a little every week.
I'm definitely in the boat of liking longer books. Characters are most important to me, way over overall story. The only short fantasy novel I ever got into was Kings of the Wyld, which didn't need to be long since it was all based in pretty established fantasy/D&D world structure
So fun! Can't wait for the Grandma episode!
On the increasing book length, it also sometimes seems editors aren't quite as picky as they used to be...
answer: because true bookworms were tired of tiny ass 5hr reads and then waiting 3 yrs for the sequel. Praise Robert Jordan, Hail Branderson.
300-400 pages is the sweet spot for me with books. If it needs to be a dumbbell, it better be holding my attention on the edge of my seat the entire time. I'm not here for filler. Did I enjoy reading 1200 pages of Sanderson? Yes. Did I enjoy reading 800 pages of Crescent City? Absolutely not. That aside, I feel like we may have a case of longer books sell for a higher price and if less people are indeed reading, then they need to make their money somehow. Just a thought.
Grazing the book stores and I have a theory, a thicker book is more likely to stand out and thus catch your eye on the shelf. Improving the odds of purchase
Ahh that could also be a part of it
I think another reason why books are getting are so longer but only in relation to bigger / famous writers: there's a big discussion recently that they're not being edited, because they're already successful and a household name so why edit them down when they're gunna sell well regardless. And I think to a certain extent this is true. The books that are blowing up (thanks to booktok and marketing) are also often included in this discussion too because these publishers know they're gunna make bank on these books so (the conspiracy is) they're not bothering to edit nor shorten these books.
Ahh, I see what you mean - could be the case!
Per the internet: "How many words is the Foundation trilogy? Here are the word counts for the books: Foundation - 70,407. Foundation and Empire - 77,451. Second Foundation - 72,021."
People also retreated to fantasy during the depression. There is a reason wizard of Oz killed it in the 30s. It's a known fact - fantastical stories do better in times of economic strife.
So hyped for Austin’s grandma! 🥹🥰🥰
WOOO. Let’s go grandma
I can agree that writing by hand for creating stories wears out your hand. Wrote 2 short stories earlier this year. total of 55 pages and I'd be sore the next day after workn on it..bc I had to get the ideas down while they were there. Great point
Let me introduce you to two of my favorite authors, Larry McMurtry and James Clavell. Now talk to me about older books being shorter.
As a life long Stephen King fan I agree lol.
I feel called out. I am doing something else while listening to this video 🤣. Not well because I got distracted and started writing this comment. But I am totally multitasking.
Two thoughts that don't necessarily go together.
1) I went to a Tamora Pierce interview once and she talked about how her publisher would not let her have a book over 200 pages because they didn't think kids would read them. And then Harry Potter came out and suddenly she was allowed to publish whatever length book she needed to to tell the story she wanted to tell.
2) I always find it interesting to look at the average length of scene cuts in movies over time when you're talking about attention span. Stick your average teenager in front of Ben-Hur and they will find it boring because all of the scenes are significantly longer than movies today.
I've never watched tiktok and never will. I also prefer long-form content here on YT. Also I'm usually doing something while watching/listening.. working, driving, cooking, doing chores, walking, shopping, etc. If I'm just going to sit for a period time then I'm reading.. and my preference is to read physically versus other formats, for several reasons. I only listen to audiobooks when I want to physically read but can't (working, driving, etc). When I read a series, I think of all the books as being the one main story and rate it as such.
Around 8:30 the Gallup poll indicating that people are reading less is brought up but you say that seems in conflict with the data showing books are getting longer.
I don' t think that's the case at all. The Gallup poll says that people are reading fewer books, it doesn't say that they're spending LESS time reading.
If books are getting longer and longer a natural result would be that unless people increase the time they spend reading, the number of books they read will naturally decline.
If I spend 500 hours per year reading books, I'll get through a lot more if the average book takes 7 hours to read vs 70 hours to read.
Definitely agree - I might’ve miscommunicated that! The attention span and people reading less books points were general assumptions I had before diving into this topic - by the end we explored why that was the case and I definitely agree with ya
As not only a book reviewer but an author I find that the huge reason that books are getting so much longer is that publishing houses see it as a great way to make more money. And then authors are force to write another book that's just as long. I won't do that! I have way too much pride.
I hauled two pallets just filled with copies of Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer across the nation so I could get to my computer and listen to this episode
I wonder how much of the “less books read” stat is correlates with the length in books? I have been reading consistently this year, but because they’re all tomes (thanks Words of Radiance) my end of year book count will be low. If on average the books are about 80 pages longer, the math could line up there to drop yearly book amounts by 1-4 or so.
Oo good point
Could some of the longer books be a product of the authors contract with the publishers? Say the publisher gives the author a 3 book contract and the author is then trying to cram 5 books of material into those 3 books.
Oo this is an interesting point - we don’t know if this is true but can definitely see that
So here are my thoughts:
reading trends have changed. Now that writing a book is much easier (and putting it in front of the audience), publishers and authors can clearly see what does well and what doesn't. I think this pushes authors to at least subconsciously get inspired to emulate these trends. I'm not just talking about things like hard magic systems, vampires, magic schools, etc; my point rather pertains to things like relatable characters, morally gray heroes, no overly purple prose. Where in Foundation the focus isn't really on the characters but rather the ideas, now in Red Rising Darrow is definitely a drawing part of the story so the author will naturally draw his characterization and struggles out more. Does this make sense? I think that in the past characters' psyche's just weren't so clearly mulled over like they are now (even if we look at things like Jane Austen's or F. Scott Fitzgerald, their characters just seem different, not worse or better, to the ones today).
That's my 2 cents.
Oh thats a great point - characterization is very different and definitely can take up more page time
You guys have an awesome bookshelf show it off I like the wideview shots better :)
Awesome episode! I love these types of topic discussions, so interesting!
(Also, Happy belated Birthday Rich!)
Okay but Richard is rocking that beanie
Ok, hear me out. Audible credits incentivize buying the longest books. I like short books when I’m at home reading, but I’ve got 10 hour shifts so I want a long book. I’m 13 books through the Wheel of Time. Not sure I could’ve done it without Michael Kramer and Kate Reading.
I have suspended my crack addiction so that I can live long enough to see Austin’s granny on the pod
😂😂
With your newest episode I can happily restart my crack addiction
@@RolReads lolol
As someone who writes for fun, I often hear people saying that authors can write many pages for very little; write many thousand pages or extend any scene to 50 pages. I find that impossible. If I have a scene in mind, that's 2 pages, no more. I'm currently writing a book where there's tons of stuff happening, but I can't get it to be the lenght of a novel.
All for my doorstopper books! Bring it!
Alternative explanations:
As society becomes more shallow, we want greater depth in our books.
As our world is more unpredictable and dangerous we want the comfort of a long and developed alternative reality.
Your videos make Mondays better. Also, you should read Realm of the Elderlings, at least if you want great characters. I'm interested to see what you would think. Also, my birthday is in April too, I suppose I'm in good company as a Taurus with Austin. (My birthday is actually World Book day, which I'm very proud of.)
I’m not sure if they read it too but the community has been reading the first series
im afraid they would hate Fitz😂😂
Per the internet: "Book-length averages: Something else to factor in is the genre. For example, thrillers tend to be shorter, coming in at around 70,000-90,000 whereas fantasy novels are usually 90,000 and up."
0:19 I look at that and go “ooooooh yeah baby…mommy likey~” but hey to each their own.
I'm not finished listening the Podcast but I have this idea
Is not that people is reading less books, is that nowdays books are longer so you have to invest more time in a single book that you can invest in multiple books.
For example we have Diskworld where all the books are very short and we have The Stormlight Archive where all the books are very long. I make some math and technically the 41 Diskworld books are equivalente to 6 or 7 books of Stormlight Length.
So If in a year I read 41 books of 200 to 300 pages I'm basically reading the same as if I read 6 or 7 books of 1200 to 1400 pages.
So I really don't think people are reading lees.
Wow we’re have I been to miss these two Awesome guys I have subscribed you guys keep doing great things!
Thanks so much!
I love short stories, novellas, short books, long books, standalones, and series. I just like stories period, in any length!
I am really looking forward to when you guys start review ASOIAF. It's easily my favorite book series and would love to hear you guys discuss each book in depth!
My favorite series is the wandering inn... And its currently the longest piece of english fiction ever written... And its still going.
Damn!!
@@2ToRamble but hey that may be a good video topic. Web novels and there place in fantasy. Also the people that do try to read this series are divided on the mc. Some think shes dumb and makes terrible choices and others think shes realistic. So like how realistic should an mc be? .... Mostly i just want to see yalls thoughts on this story lol. But thats no different then any fantasy nerd haha
When we all finished LOTR books, we all wanted MORE. Tokeinn even said it also.
So today we are getting it.
That would be true if the added material was actually something worth adding. What we get instead is more filler, dumber dialogue, and repetitive descriptions (one of the worst offenders here being Sanderson). I would only want more from a series like ASOIAF, because Martin actually delves deeper into the lore of the world rather than just add useless shit.
There is something to be said for revelling in the world that is built. It is pleasurable to re-read WOT more than any series I am aware of, in my limited view. I found it great to re-read The Slog of WOT books, enjoying getting to know the characters more, instead of racing thru to find out What Happens Next. VICTORY TO ALL
@@alb0zfinest
I would also like to add that authors do this for monetary gain. In the romance community a lot of the books I read are on Kindle Unlimited. Authors get paid via pages turned. The longer the book, the more money they would receive.
Where did you get those stormlight book ends ?
Also you guys got me into the series. Loving it thus far.
We got it from a kickstarter Sanderson had!
The larger the book the more likely I am to read it.
I LIKE BIG BOOKS AND I CANNOT LIE!!!
The contradiction of shorter attention spans and longer books can be explained by fetishism. There's an aura of prestige around large books. In this age, that prestige increases, exactly because it runs counter to everyone's cultural habits. The writing has also become much simpler, so the time to read these books might not have increased as much as the page count.
21:11
Genuine life hack. Of course, there's always going to be bad actors who try to manipulate others, but even in regular conversation this is beyond valuable. You could say "the sky is blue," but if you sound small or otherwise uncertain in saying it, people can (and likely will) feel uncertain in taking to your words. Not necessarily because they're untruthful, the sky is indeed blue, but rather it seems as though there's something being left unsaid, or that you don't know if the sky is blue, and therefore you're stupid.
I believe some of the bigger reason why books are getting bigger is because 1. Audiobooks 2. Worldbuilding more and more people are getting lost in these worlds. 3. More complex stories and characters. I'm might be a smob but I don't like older sci-fi & fantasy.
Maybe people are reading less books because the books have gotten longer and they are spending more time on each one, and not reading as many per year… idk 😂
Just to set the record straight (pun intended), the dictaphone was a recording device. The first versions recorded your voice on wax cylinders. They were the forerunners for your average pocket recorder. So you recorded something that needed to be documented and someone could put it down on paper later on. Thanks for an interesting discussion. I am of two minds about long or short books. I do think that the lower page count fits me better but if a novel is less than 200 pages, I might feel like there isn't enough room to develop ideas or characters. I'd say 400 pages is perfect for me. There are simply too many novels I just can't get into nowadays. I get tired of this or that. I only have a couple of authorships that I follow closely ( C. J. Cherryh and Sharon Lee & Steve Miller) and the rest is more or less blips on my radar. I've tried the first few books in many of the 'modern' fantasy series but haven't felt like finishing them. I am still on the lookout for something written during the first two decades of the fantasy boom that I will find to be my go to series. I do find some new novels to be good (Margaret Rogerson's Sorcery of Thorns, for instance and Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Diving Universe SF novels) but I'm having a hard time finding and staying with new authors.
I'm looking forward to the grandma episode!
Great video, you all uncovered quite a few "whys" I hadn’t thought of (EX. more free time).
I know personally, the availability of audiobooks is the only reason I can consume long fantasy books.
Did you guys see Sanderson talking about how publishers want him to publish like Will Wight? They prefer smaller books.
No we didnt see that - what was Sanderson saying?
@@2ToRamble something along the lines of... his publisher would prefer five 200 page books rather than one 1,000 page book. They'd prefer each of Stormlight's "Parts" be their own book.
He mentions that the Cradle series is exactly what they want.
If the book isn't atleast 500 pages I don't even bother looking at it
Richard already answered it really well at the beginning. Books are longer because modern prose isnt as literary, its much more colloquial. This transition probably was aided boy technology. You cannot possibly imagine somone writing the way of kings on scrolls.
If books are getting longer then maybe they take longer to read, so that equates to slightly less books being read in the same time frame?
Idk, if a book is exceptional, I really don’t mind settling down for a few days with a 10 pound tome. But I also do love short books as a palate cleanser, something I can get through in a day or less.
Also bigger books look good on shelves. People on social media want to be seen as readers, not actually read. So when they do those shelf tours the long books look really good.
I think we can also compare it to the popularity of tv series adaptations in recent years: more and more stories gain tv series adaptations which are longer and more detailed that movie adaptations 🤔
One part of me thinks that I like short books more, because I can find out how it ends quicker and read more stories
But then I’m mostly reading long books, because I enjoy them more and get so attached to the characters and the world
I (austin) have the same feeling
I’m still into history books! But fantasy is always the best!
We aren't bound by as many limitations because of technology. Not only do we have more binding options for physical books, but the actual writing process stands to enable longer books, potentially even obfuscating the real length as the author writes.
I’m need those hoodies
This Friday announcement coming 😮💨
This was great, congatulations
Hi. Just discovered your podcast. You should do an interview with Grandma in progress of LOTR. What she thinks so far and what she's looking forward to. Then do a followup interview after finishing it.
Dont care how long the book is as long as its good.
I love big fantasy books. Especially when the story is great. I remember getting through The Way Of Kings and Words of Radiance and happy they were that big. The payoff is so worth.
What about the factor that more readers are reading on Kindle vs a physical book. Therefore authors & publisher dont have to worry about costs of publishing physical books, and thereby authors can write the stories at the length & details they really want to. But I am sure yall have addressed later in thid video that I didnt get around to while writing this😅
Neil Stevenson wrote all his books by hand the first draft which is crazy because his books are massive! Snow crash is only 550 but borque cycle is 3000 anthem, and crypotonomicom is like 900
My grandma was the best cook too! Never went by a recipe, it was all in her head. If I tried to do that, I'm pretty sure I'd accidentally poison people, lol!
Lol
(let's see if you guys talk about this after I keep playing the video lol) But I think the thing about people are reading on average fewer books a year, yet the books are longer makes sense. What if people aren't actually reading less time wise, but because it's taking them longer to get through each book they're reading less books in the same amount of time?
you all should bring the podcast to your grandma! would be awesome
I don’t mind a bigger book, if it’s broken up into shorter chapters or at least broken up into sections within the chapter. So it’s easier for me to read more or less as needed.
Actually a goated sponsor
Marketing may be a reason too. It grabs attention & When I see a huge book I typically wonder why.
If you read 14 books (in 2000) that are 63 pages shorter than in 2024, that is the equivalent of 882 pages; which would make up the difference between 14 books in the past and 12 books now (12 books that are 63 pages longer means you are reading the equivalent of 883 more pages). So, 14 books that are (on average) 63 pages shorter, works out to BE THE SAME AS 12 books that are 883 total pages longer. People read fewer books now, but the books they are reading are LONGER. Same number of total pages.
Damn what a cool podcast RUclips recommended me, very nice guys!
Thanks a bunch!
Will you guys be reviewing Dune part 2? Would like to know what you guys think of it
We absolutely will - watching this Saturday and will record Sunday!
I loved the video! Also, you guys should totally read The Will of the Many by James Islington!!❤
Richard just got a copy!
Since the studies you mentioned used page counts instead of word counts to show the increasing lengths of books, could formatting differences such as font size or margins also have contributed?
Possibly! Though the studies may have accounted for that
Richard trashing on short books is so funny with his favorite series being wheel of time
Happy I read all my books on my kindle. So I don’t get stressed with a big book cause I can’t see how big it is!!
I'm writing my own series that I'm hoping to publish some day and personally, I'm shooting for 300 pages average, 400 max. The 200s like Narnia are too short for me, you can't get as deep a story as I'm going for, and Stephen King or Dune level at 500-600 is too long. I don't have THAT complicated a story to tell. 300-400 has proven to be a comfortable length so far, plus some of the books I have of that length are just more comfortable to look at and hold. Not magazine thin, but also not brick thick. I personally like reading longer books because of the complexity, but I just don't like writing them.
brother, that's my thing: long books that I can enjoy for the next 3 months
the purpose is so that we can passively get swole while we read because the longer the book, the heavier it is 🧠
Hey Displate did continue sponsoring you! Love to see it.
😁😁
I just got The Hobbit and LOTR and hope to read them soon! I want to make sure I have all the books "they" have been threatening to ban.