Why are books so thick now?

[libri vermis]

I enjoy a wonderful, thick, heavy tome now and then, especially if the story and characters speak to me and I don't want it to end.

[Guest velocipede2288]

You would have to go a long way to find better thrillers than those written by Dashiell Hammett, James McCain, Ramond Chandler etc, and they were never more than 200 pages thick.

Hammett would go back to his novels and cut,cut, cut and par out all the chaff before he was finished.

[vinay87]

I'll admit that I make a point to buy a brick of a book whenever I buy in bulk. Atleast one in five has to be big for me or sometimes, it just doesn't last. Sadly enough the better the small novel, the sadder I sometimes feel. In cold thought though, sometimes shorter novels seem like a one night stand. Especially if they have little rereadability like most suspense novels. And then again, many of the great classics were/are brick sized.

*cough*War And Peace*cough*Don Quixote*cough*Les Miserables*cough*Count of Monte Cristo*cough*

 

Yet, some novels do knock our socks off even if they're small. Agatha Christie did that often, and so most novels by Alistair Maclean and Erle Stanley Gardner.

 

Heh The Time Machine is what, 120 pages long?

Good times.

And yes, binding quality has diminished. And yes I wish books in a series were always made in one type as a set. Whatever happened to those old doorstopping tomes that seemed to look monotonously alike?

[atticjnr]

I don't have any preference to book size, as long as the content is good and keeps me hooked. Although it is sad to get to the end of a standalone thin book, they are that way for a reason. If you find things don't tie up completely but you know things are heading in the right direction for the characters, it leaves room for you to ponder what has actually happened and I personally love this.

However.

I absolutely love when I start a huge book and find myself snared instantly. It's the feeling of knowing you are a few pages into something you adore, and looking at the book from the top with your bookmark in it and thinking, "wow, this is amazing and I have sooo much more to discover!". I must admit though, I do feel slightly silly sometimes when I pull out a huge book on a train or tube, but who cares what other people think, eh?

[Nollaig]

It's the feeling of knowing you are a few pages into something you adore, and looking at the book from the top with your bookmark in it and thinking, "wow, this is amazing and I have sooo much more to discover!".

 

This is exactly how I feel about Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. At 460 pages in, I'm not even halfway through and SO much has happened across several years already

 

I definitely prefer a longer book, 300-500 pages ideally, but that won't stop me from reading a shorter book, they can be equally good - I personally just prefer longer, chunkier reads.

[BigWords]

While the number of words can make the difference between a slim book and a large book, various editions of the exact same text can differ across printings due to paper weight, font size and the dimensions of the printable area. It can make it seem that older novels (in reprint form) are longer than they are thanks to a careful balance of heavier paper stock, slightly larger typeface and wider margins around the text. It isn't merely than word counts are rising (which they have been), but other factors are complicit in making books heavier.

[Guest velocipede2288]

I have a whole shelf of Erle Stanley Gardner, none are over 200 pages each. Same with Agatha Christie, Ed McBain, John Creasey, Edgar Wallace, Maigret, Ian Rankin, John Mortimer,Dashiel Hammett, I could go on and on,all hugely popular and most have had their stories made into films.

A book doesn't have to be thick to be good. I sometimes love to read a thick book such as those of Terry Pratchett's. But many are just so much padding and if read in a parred down version in the Readers Digest for instance, nothing is missed.

[Pablo]

Surely the thicker the book, the better value for money, assuming of course that the quality is not undermined by page-filler.

[Guest velocipede2288]

Surely the thicker the book, the better value for money, assuming of course that the quality is not undermined by page-filler.

 

That is just my point. I have just read...should I say...struggled through a book that wasn't that thick, just 330 pages, but if the filling had been cut out, the whole story could have been written in 100 pages.

I enjoy reading someone like Terry Pratchett, usually about 500 pages thick, because they are enjoyable to read. But many books are a struggle and could be written in far less words.

[vinay87]

Not to be rude but I've never seen Terry Pratchett books over ~250 pages.

[BookJumper]

That's probably a matter of edition Vinay; in England at least they're mostly available as horribly small Mass Market paperbacks, in which format most of them are indeed between 4-500 pages.

[vinay87]

oh wow... larger print I guess.... So most of my books might seem like the print is ant sized to everyone lol....

 

My Wheel of Time books would be 3000 pages long in that case then...

[Guest velocipede2288]

Not to be rude but I've never seen Terry Pratchett books over ~250 pages.

 

Thief of time. Lords and Ladies, The truth, etc. All over 400 pages long.And many more.

[jankensan]

That said, I would not feel short-changed if people didn't insist on charging me

[BookJumper]

I like to own books I read is the problem, particularly ones I know I'm going to like - I've read and loved Bach's work before and the premise behind Jonathan really cries out to me.

[KW]

To make them feel like you're getting your money's worth.

[Guest velocipede2288]

Bookjumper, Why not just borrow it from the library? It's free! Then you don't have to worry about value for money...

 

May I also suggest, you buy them from amazon.com on the used list. These are a fraction of the costs and are usuallly like new.

[BookJumper]

May I also suggest, you buy them from amazon.com on the used list. These are a fraction of the costs and are usuallly like new.

... in my experience, no they're not. Even new books from Amazon aren't so new-looking these days, and I've been lied to re: book condition so often by used sellers I now only trust them when I can't avoid it, i.e. if a book's out of print.

 

I don't mind paying RRP for a book, in fact I'll quite happily pay RRP if it means I can ensure my copy's in good shape. But it seems unjustifiable to me that a book that's 400 pages and one that's less than 100 can be sold to me at the same price.

[vinay87]

But it seems unjustifiable to me that a book that's 400 pages and one that's less than 100 can be sold to me at the same price.

 

haha I think the same things sometimes. My copy of Histories cost me less than my copy of Cujo!! And it's atleast seven times larger!!

[jankensan]

No offence meant with the next statement, but if a book cries out to you, it's worth facing the fact that it may not be good value for money in the page to price ratio and/ or borrowing a copy to read now and buying a perfect copy to own later...

 

If a book's worth reading I'd read it whatever the condition (borrowed from friends, library or bought used), personally it's more about enjoying the work than owning it. You can't take it with you after all, but at the lowest of low moments in your life you can recall something about a book that really touched you, and whether or not you own a pristine copy doesn't come into it, whatever that book says to you is what matters.

 

Slightly divergent course for the thread so apologies for that, but I honestly don't think the page to price ratio should be a consideration in whether or not to read a book that you obviously feel so passionately about. Seize the moment and all that jazz!

 

I think the reason is that the raw materials to make a book are inexpensive but a small book costs just as much to promote and publish in fees and royalties etc...In fact if you think about it, thicker books are probably cheaper to print because you need to buy larger quantities of paper thus giving you greater purchasing power...???!!! There must be a logic to it somewhere!

[BigWords]

Has anyone noticed that coffee tables are getting smaller, while coffee table books are getting bigger?

 

In fact if you think about it, thicker books are probably cheaper to print because you need to buy larger quantities of paper thus giving you greater purchasing power...???!!! There must be a logic to it somewhere!

 

I have several British comic books from the 1940s, and I can state with certainty that thickness and page count are two different things, so when you say "lager quantities of paper" you should really add "certain types of paper" - one hokey old Buck Jones comic I have is forty pages long, yet is thicker than this month's issue of Empire magazine. The cost of paper back in the forties was weighed heavily in favor of the woodpulp paper (which is why so few pulp magazines, annuals and storybooks survive in any condition) whilst higher quality printing (books, primarily) survives in relative abundance.

 

At the moment it is cheaper to buy certain paper stocks from virgin sources (for all sorts of reasons) than it is to use recycled paper, though a certain number of publishers do use recycled paper for their books. There is a difference in both feel and weight, mitigated somewhat when binding and hardcovers are added to the finished book... There are thousands of reasons why books are seemingly changing at the moment, and I'm certain that similar discussions to this were being held in smoking rooms and gentlemens clubs a hundred or so years ago.

[vinay87]

Has anyone noticed that coffee tables are getting smaller, while coffee table books are getting bigger?

 

YES!!!

 

It's like a conspiracy!!