By Todd Sattersten
Amazon launched Kindle Singles last week. These original works of 10,000 to 30,000 words are designed to fill the space between an essay and book. At the same time, TED, the popular conference organization, launched TED Books as a publishing imprint using the Singles program. Director Chris Anderson stated what he sees as the problem: “Busy people can be daunted at the prospect of having to read a 300- or 400-page book.” Amazon VP Russ Grandinetti suggesting a more elegant reason for this experimental evolution: “Our goal with Singles is to allow compelling ideas to be expressed at their natural length.”
Todd Sattersten
What Amazon and TED clearly believe is that e-books are going to remove the fear publishers have of needing to deliver specific minimum page count. The variety of screen dimensions across an ever growing number of reading devices and the ability for readers to adjust font size in this new e-world makes the page infinitely variable in size and measuring page count pointless. Each electronic “container” now dictates the form the book will take, much like pouring same amount of water into a champagne flute and saucepan create very different results. So what do we use instead?
I wonder if the daunting “400 page problem” that Anderson suggests leads us to a better solution. Maybe minutes and seconds is the best measure of book length in the digital world. Music and movies, which migrated to digital formats years ago, consistently provide the duration of the piece and there are already signs of this standard being associated with the written word.
The curation website Longreads, which directs readers to quality long form writing, provides, along with the title, author, source, and synopsis, the number of words contained in each piece and an estimate of the time required to read. It does not seem much of a stretch that with small evolutions in our reading devices we could measure the actual speed of the person reading and customize those times to match to the individual.
Seeing those time estimates will change our perceptions of reading as an activity, for better and worse. I already have an improved and altered sense for the time I spend reading, and I do sometimes avoid pieces because of the word count exceeds my day’s quota. Smart book publishers will help readers get over the attention anxiety by providing time estimates for each chapter (“You can read this book in ten easy installments of 17 minutes each!”) –- something that is available as an easy plug-in for blogs and others forms of online publishing. Or maybe our device will tell us how much time is left in a chapter as a replacement to our old method of paging ahead to find the chapter’s end.
This shift from page count to word count will be another casualty of the physical book that will be lamented. Purists will see this as another horrible concession, wishing we returned to an age when books were shown proper respect. “We are going to start saying, ‘This is a four hour, seventeen minute book?’ That’s absurd!”
But what if this shift is a way for books to better fit into our a world where we measure in smaller and smaller slices of time? The book hasn’t changed, only the way we relate to it has. And what if instead of choosing another 47 minute episode of Mad Men from iTunes, that reluctant reader picks up a book, knowing she can finish five more chapters before going to bed? That seems like a good trade-off.
Todd Sattersten runs BizBookLab, a company that identifies, develops, and launches business books around the world. He also thinks about the future of publishing . . . a lot.
DISCUSSION: Are Smaller, Shorter Books More Appealing to Time-crunched Readers?
9 Comments
Some interesting points are raised here. I suffer from being a very fast reader with a taste for popular fiction… Lee Child, Clive Cussler and their ilk defining my genre preference. One of their typical titles occupies me for two evening reading sessions or for a flight from Abu Dhabi to Munich or back!
As buyer of two or three paperbacks per week… and as a budget-aware Scot… I am often infuriated by the tricks of the publishing houses who use font-size and line-spacing cunningly to make many ‘thin’ volumes look much more substantial. This applies in particular to the larger and more costly trade paperback editions. And I have often wished that a word-count be as obligatory as an ISBN number.
A relationship between word-count and price would be very welcome and would bring publishing into line with other media. For the price of your cinema ticket you confidently expect about two hours of distraction and would feel cheated if the lights went back on after just an hour. Those of us ancient enough to remember will recall that an ‘extended play’ 7 inch 45rpm record with perhaps four tracks cost appropriately more than a ‘single’.
Todd raises some very thoughtful points. Publishers have long used page count as a reflection of value and pricing. Of course, page count is completely fungible. Not only can font, margins and leading be adjusted, but so can paper thickness. But it gave consumers an easy way to judge the bulk of a book and ostensibly its value to them. Clearly we need a new more relevant measure. With more and more content digital only page count becomes laughably irrelevant.
Word count offers some prospects. It is much less variable than page count. It does not, however, work well for illustrated content–especially enhanced content where as a measure of value to the consumer which be understated.
The idea of reading time seems too complex and while Todd has some provocative ideas about consumer behavior being influenced by reading time, it makes what is often a leisure activity somehow as pressured as catching a train. No one calculates the value of a movie theater ticket off the running time of a film, but that is the net effect of using reading time as a measure for written content.
In any case I think given the variables in ebook pricing and evolving consumer expectations in terms of ebook value, we need to use page numbers on a transitional basis to help consumers determine value versus pricing. Even if this is a bit vestigial and irrelevant, it can help give consumers a touchpoint as they work through understanding a new system.
We do need to develop something on an industry basis. This reminds me a bit of the abortive attempt to adopt the metric system. We blinked and thought the cost to high to transition and now we live with a less effective and differentiated measurement system. In the global world of digital content non-standardization would be a horrendous situation.
I wonder whether this isn’t a “false problem”. Because you could equally well argue that e-readers beautifully solve the problem of super.long books – for example, Stied Larsson’s trilogy, with each volume coming in at around 800 pages! That’s a lot to carry on your Munich flight to Abu Dabi! So, the problem of long, heavy books is digitally solved…which means that length which could be a problem for a lot of readers (especially those travelling) is no longer a problem!
So, just as there may be a move to shorter books, there’s likely to be a move to longer ones. All I hope is that the “natural length” of a book will be respected in all cases!
These are all great comments.
Malcolm – I am wondering if price can be disconnected from time/page count more in the electronic world. There is certainly a “long enough” factor. You mention movie and they can vary from 90 minutes to 200 minutes and you still paid the same amount.
Jenny – My argument is that most people have little awareness for the time that are going to spend reading a book. It would be a very interesting experiment to see if what our ability is to calculate reading time based on seeing the book and then maybe adding the ability for someone to look at the interior. I think more awareness for the time you are going to spend with the product would remove some fear of the unknown and make books less daunting.
Claude – The problem is that when I download Larsson onto my Kindle I have no sense for how long it is. My bag is certainly lighter, but I have no sense for what is in it.
Having recently adopted a Kindle, I can say that I miss the Table of Contents and page numbers. Yes, I like the new-found convenience and ease as well as the elimination of shipping with the Kindle. But page numbers are still a good way to navigate a text– especially if you are a literature teacher, or if you are working with another sort of textbook.
Yes, I’ll admit it: I MISS page numbers and I miss the heft of a book (as long as I am not traveling). I miss savoring the journey through all of those pages and knowing exactly where I am. Percentage bar at the bottom of the Kindle screen seems a weak substitute.
I think there is still value to page numbers as a reference.
Word count is by far the easiest way to determine how long it is going to take me to read a book in digital format but you are right that I don’t really have a sense of how long it takes me to read. Right now I am reading Hour of the Star in paperback. It is a really thin book and should have only taken me maybe an hour to read. Yet two weeks later I am still reading it because it is a dense story that I am reading at bedtime.
I don’t think playing time of a dvd and reading time quite equate the way you would like them to. Obviously playing time is a straight ahead machine measurement where as reading time is affected by so many things. Are you reading at night -in bed, in a dr. office, are you tired, focused etc. So yes I like the idea of reading time personalized but other modalities need to come into the settings.
Bailey – Given the “page” is no longer consistent for the reader, we still need a consistent way to reference where we are in a body of work. I agree.
Word count (i.e. I am at word #4325) would provide a strangely precise location. We may not want that level of precision.
In the electronic world, Ben Casnocha suggested last year that any four word search string would offer a consistent location and could be easily shared.
http://toddsattersten.com/2010/09/when-there-are-no-page-numbers.html
I have also heard people mention the need to return to a chapter and verse nomenclature. The Bible doesn’t have page numbers. This architecture provides for both precision and flexibility in how the material is presented.
These are all great comments but the entire discussion makes me wonder – does it really matter whether or how we quantify reading time – and – is a book’s value tied to it’s page count? I’m not an avid reader, but I will buy a novel because I am interested in reading it. The thickness of the book doesn’t matter. If I think I will like it, I’ll buy it, no matter how big or small. All that matters is that the story is good. If the story isn’t compelling, regardless of the length of the book I won’t finish it.
I just bought an e-reader and I am enjoying the experience. I do agree that in this era of e-readers, word count is the most objective method of comparing books in terms of quantity of content, but that shouldn’t determine value or price. Though I like the idea of chapters and verses. It would be ironic if this shift to technology brought us back full circle to antique ways of structuring books.
Off the top of my head, perhaps a system of numerical margin markers, say every 100 words, would ease this transition. The lack of page numbers in a work of fiction poses no particular inconvenience, in my opinion. As a publisher of nonfiction, however, the inability to locate specific text or reference points within a work is a problem, especially for heavily annotated works with notes, footnotes and bibliographic references crucial to the researcher or works that are likely to be cited in other publications or research. It also raises havoc with the table of contents and index. If the margin markers were subtle gray numbers in fine print, they would get you at least as close to the desired text as a page reference does now–perhaps even closer. The numbers could be further refined by chapter number, e.g. 5-300 (signifying chapter 5 at the 30,000-word mark), for lengthy works. Just a thought.