Comment by vouaobrasil
Comment by vouaobrasil 3 days ago
The main reason not to write a book is that the topic doesn't need a book-length treatment, and would be better as an article. Fiction of course is one thing, but even then, some fictional ideas and personality combinations are better as short stories. Personally, as a reader, I find a lot of book ideas interesting (especially in the realm of popular science), but I can stomach very few of them because they are excessively wordy and often full of overly long (IMO) personal experiences.
This is my #1 gripe with non-fiction books. Way too wordy, too many anecdotes, just spit it out already.
Please value my time as the reader. I read a lot of books, but I feel like I’m allocating more mental energy skimming half the content than I am absorbing knowledge.
37signals/Basecamp had some illuminating things to say about their book experiences. They kept fighting with the publisher to make their book short, the appropriate length. The publisher kept wanting it to be double the length to seem more impressive on the shelf.
That mindset is to the detriment of books, just get to the point.