Activity vs. Productivity from a Book POV

Anyone who has ever done 2 through 100 Even knows the difference between Activity and Productivity. Unfortunately, the distinction seems to have been lost on a segment of the book buying population, who have begun to do price comparisons for books the way they do sugar, by the pound, assuming more writing is better writing.

A friend of mine posted an article on her Facebook page some time ago where the author said books were getting longer. One of the comments extolled the virtues of this tendency, because they felt they were getting more value for their money.

If you pay eight dollars for a four hundred page book (400/800) that comes out to .5 pages per cent. If you buy a six hundred page book for eight dollars (600/800) that comes out to .75 pages per cent. Congrats, you optimized your book buying 50% by purchasing the six hundred page book.

Books should be as short as they possibly can be. Even I, who is so rarely accused of being stingy when it comes to length in the written medium, must agree. Let's look at some examples of some popular books:

Don Quijote
Moby Dick
War and Peace

These books are all furiously long and have a reputation for being a slog.

The Giver
Of Mice and Men
Captain Blood

In contrast, these books are considerably shorter and have much more favorable reputations.

Now, take Don Quijote and just read the first sally, which is the first five or six chapters. You'll find it is much more enjoyable than the bulk of the remaining text, except the parts about enemas and when he bad mouths the guy who wrote the False Quijote and maybe when Sancho gets the island.

After that, take Of Mice and Men and put in pages of descriptions of the repetitive happenings that occur while Lenny and George are at the farm, throw in some horticulture discussions, and pad the book out to about double its current length and see how much fun it is to read.

Examples of books decried for their length are not limited to ones written by people who are dead; there are plenty of contemporary examples. Plenty will argue that large chunks of the Game of Thrones series could have been excised for example.

Still one of those people who feels the longer and cheaper a book the better cost to value? I give you Antoine de Saint-Exupery, assuming my Google search was correct:

 "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

One might also note, according to Google, he was a writer.