Why Books Are Getting Longer
July 27, 2014 in Daily Bulletin
Jeremy Anderberg looked at the most popular books going back to 1904, and the number of pages in each one. He found that books have been getting longer:
- In 1904 the average bestseller had 219 pages. In 2013, the last full year for which data is available, the average was 468.
- This might be because with the rise of tablets, people no longer have to lug around heavy books if they want a long read.
- It may also be a result of the Netflix binge culture where people like to lose themselves in an alternate reality for several hours.
- And perhaps customers believe that they are getting more value for their money when they buy longer books.
Find out the granular data about the length of books over the years, why there was a dip between 1954 and 1964, the books that have driven up the average, and some short books that you can enjoy in a day over here.
Source: Book Riot
Via: Marginal Revolution
Comparing to 1904? Manufacturing and distribution had to be way more expensive back then, I’d guess they were told to keep them short! Editing and typesetting could not have been much fun either 🙂
We’ve been hovering (up and down) in the mid-300 pages to mid-400 page books since the 1970s. Tablets and eBooks are still pretty new, so I don’t know if that’s very factorable.
Keep in mind some books are really parts of trilogies (the full story could be considered to be longer); the Divergent trilogy add up to over 1,500 pages (that’s 500+ pages each), if that’s one story, then maybe our numbers are a lot higher.
And there are a lot of books out there that aren’t very popular, are they pulling the average up or down? I’d like to see some info on the length of popular books throughout the years; I’d also like it to be fiction or non-fiction specific.