You read less and leave early
People dedicate less time to the reading of books, leaves precociously a book, ma i books grow of pages. We have already spoken extensively about the first phenomenon by commenting on a recent research by Pew Research Center. For the second phenomenon – abandonment – Kobo Inc., the Canadian company that produces the Kobo ereader (anagram of book), recently announced that the completion rate of the books read on the device è of the Present in several = 20%. A percentage prossima to that made on the most widespread and used Kindle. Although Amazon does not disseminate data of any kind, it has been noted that the vast majority of public highlights su Kindle (Popular Highlights) and farm al first chapter and hardly goes into the later parts of the text.
Jordan Ellenberg, the literary reporter of the "Wall Street Journal", last summer enjoyed drawing up a ranking of the "summer non-read books": the least read book of summer 2014 it was Capital in the XNUMXst century di Thomas Picketty: All highlights stop at the first 20 pages. It follows closely from A Brief History of Time di Stephen Hawking with an alleged completion rate of the Present in several = 6.6% of the entire content. A book that appears to have been read in its entirety is The Goldfinch di Woman Tart with a star completion rate of the Present in several = 98,5%.
It happens, as we well know, that many books are purchased ma not read entirely. With digital reading, this phenomenon has continued and will continue to expand because there is no longer a book on the bedside table to remind you that you left it on page 40. In fact, after a day, a book that has just started on a digital device scompare from ours field of view and in the end it also disappears from the opening screen. After a month you no longer even know that you have started it or even downloaded it. garlic publishers interest a little that the book is bed or not, for them thevery important è sell it. If it is read and shared better, much better, but the fact that it is read in part or not at all does not rob anyone of sleep general director. There is no completion rate column in their spreadsheet. It doesn't even take away sleep authors that instead they should sleep worried, because hardly un reader who soon abandons the reading of a work makes ad stock up of a later work by same author. More than the size of the advance, authors should be concerned with how many people finish reading their books.
If 80 more pages seem few to you
If people read less, soon abandon reading to devote themselves to other healthier activities like the gym or less healthy like X-Factor, then we will have to think back thereading offer preparing a shorter content e faster to complete? No that's what actually happens in book market, Because the books not they are becoming smaller e Shorter to read. Is happening the exact contrary. says asurvey conducted by Vervesearch on 2.500 books entered, from 1999 to today, in the rankings of the New York Times bestseller. Compared to a book that ranked in the 1999, today a book who is lucky enough to be on these coveted lists has, on average, 80 more pagesand an 25% increase: from 320 average pages in 1999 to 400 today. Explain this phenomenon is a nice challenge. How do you combine the decline in reading demand with the increase in the supply of titles and even pages to read?
The first impression is that there is something wrong in the sense that a misalignment between i behavior of book suppliers and that of the mass of the reading consumers. Editors e authors di band A tend to have like landmark principal of their actions the strong reader, the reader, that is, who consumes more than 25 books per year. The problem is that this type of reader è in regression and it also tends to be seduced by other forms of media that arrive directly on their devices. L'other 75 percent in fact It is given for lost or for can be activated only with sporadic blockbusters which is difficult to give an impression of continuity. The latest cosmic bestseller have been Le 50 shades of gray, but after that nothing happened and the book industry shows the same performance as the European economy. When there were Shades il ebook market grew by triple digits. Today thecapital goal of the book industry is just to broaden the readership base up to and including this 75% sleepers through product innovation. A rather alien concept to the big players in this industry, including great authors. Many of these think, at best, that they are dupes or simply an Amazon Trojan horse to bring the entire industry under their auspices. All risk-averse people who prefer to go the beaten track. And instead the big players in the book industry should look at what is happening on television with streaming even simply by reading the article by James Poniewozik, the TV critic of the "New York Times", Streaming TV Isn't Just a New Way to Watch. It's a New Genrewhich ends with these words:
More than any other innovation in TV, streaming has the potential, indeed the possibility, to create a whole new narrative genre – which is referred to as Netflix TV above –; a genre with elements of television, cinema and the novel, but different from each of them. But it takes time to master all this.
None of this is happening in the book industry and Amazon's attempt to be the industry's Netflix is stalled for the time being. Innovation is in the attic and established industry is solely committed to rejecting it. Innovation is thus in the hands of technological start-ups and subjects outside the industry start-up system. Disruption will come from them, but it will take time, a long time, much longer than streaming TV. Amazon alone is no longer enough.
Other explanations for the increase in the volume of books
A second explanation – more generous than the first – could be the will, of all theecosystem book (authors, publishers, distributors, bookshops), by hand out to the consumer a better product also in terms of amount need packaging. book it is still one goods and perceived value by the consumer is also given by his materiality. More pages, more monetary value. A recent study of comments posted on Yelp and Trip Advisor by customers of restaurants and eateries shows that the negative ranking of these places is largely determined by size of the portions. It could be a clue, because books are food too.
Another very fascinating, but equally unsatisfactory explanation is that i readers who continue to love the written word and prefer it to the cutthroat competition of other less cerebral but infinitely more attractive media, Amano stare in the stories well written and they are willing to make us one investment of time and emotion. The longer this immersion lasts, the more rewarding it becomes. For them, 80 more pages are just pure lust.
A third explanation is that it was precisely theE-commerce a to encourage indirectly the production of books di greater mole. On an online bookstore, the number of pages in a book is very diluted information. It's not clear from the cover thumbnail or preview whether the book is 80 or 800 pages long. The reader pays less attention to the materiality of the object. Then with reading books on Kindle and tablets, the tonnage of the book it doesn't weigh in the suitcase and does not take away vital space on the plane. On reading devices the pages are never the same because the text is liquid and therefore generally there is a tendency not to pay much attention to the extension of the writing, certainly less than what can happen in a real library.
We reproduce below in Italian translation the article by Richard Lea, The big question: are books getting longer?, appeared in the "Guardian", which discusses the results of the survey we mentioned above.
The growth of the pages is the manifestation of a cultural turning point
Books are steadily increasing in size according to a survey which found that the average number of pages in a book grew by 80 pages in 15 years.
A survey of more than 2.500 bestsellers in the New York Times and other major rankings shows that the average length of a book has increased from 320 pages in 1999 to 400 pages in 2014. According to Vervesearch's James Finlayson, who coordinated the investigation on behalf of the interactive publisher Flipsnack, in 15 years have been added about 80 pages to the average book size. For Finlayson this trend can be explained with the transition al digital ofbook industry. “When you pick up a book in a shop, it happens that you can be frightened by its size. On Amazon, however, the size of a book is a footnote to which little attention is paid. There growth of digital reading and another factoradds Finlayson. “Generally I always postpone the purchase of large books until I'm on vacation because I don't want to clutter up my suitcase. But if you have a thick book on a Kindle, that's fine."
Literary agent Clare Alexander agrees that bulk books are more portable electronically, but points out that the digital reading happens maximally solo for some genres such as romance, noir and erotic. For Alexander the growth gradual of dimensions of the book is manifestation of a cultural turn. Here's how this cultural breakthrough happened in Alexander's words:
Despite talk of the book dying due to competition from other media, the people is choose di read prefer narrations extended ed extensive, the opposite of the bits of information that appear on our smartphones or electronic devices connected to the Internet. It is the Americans who have led the way – think Donna Tart, Jonathan Franzen, Hanya yanagihara and more recently Marlon James (Jamaican but living in America) – but they are not alone. Hilary Mantel in the UK or Eleanor Catton in New Zealand wrote long novels, and if you keep listing authors who like extended stories, you'll notice like this one trend has been premiata laid down by the criticizes and come on literary prizes. Evidently the literary establishment also loves long books.
The literary establishment loves long books
Il Man Booker prize he has been the mainstay of the literary establishment in the UK since the XNUMXs and proof of this trend can be found in roll of winners. Novels Winners of the first five years of the prize had an average extension of 300 pages, but also taking into account Julian Barnes' 2011 triumph with a 160-page short story (The Sense of an Ending), in the last five years novels rewarded count an average of 520 pages. This year's winner A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James is 700 pages.
Max porter, editor of Granta who published the 800 pages of The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton thinks that it is difficult to think of a breakthrough that runs through the entire market, but believes that it is encouraging that gods libri so great e ambitious they meet still the taste of the public and the favor of criticizes. Porter explains:
In all cultures, people are debating about going digital, what devices will be used to access it, and so on. I think it is very important is there are more big books that say "Read me!”. The boom of TV shows, to which people devote dozens of hours to follow a single narrative, ha encouraged The publishers a support those authors they intend paint un large fresco. People have been seen to have the will, patience and stamina to keep up with a story and its characters as it unfolds over a large expanse.
Large books are well suited to being carried on electronic devices, but Porter isn't entirely convinced that digital reading is spurring this trend. In this regard, he cites studies that show two rather discouraging things: yes they start reading just Present in several = 60% of the books in electronic format and that the completion rate of some stocks fell around 20%.
A large book occupies an important space in your field of vision – continues Porter. And the a manifestation has been conducted physics of your intention to spend il time necessary to read it. The current tendency of books to increase one's waistline can instead be explained by a proud affirmation of identity. The novel has come to the brink of its denial. There are so many stimuli that demand our attention, so many forms of competition that novels have decided to be large and expansive to such an extent that they require us to sit in an armchair, turn off the cell phone and dedicate to the reading il time it takes.
Are swag novels an exception?
“This year there has been inflation of swag novels", He says Alex Bowler, managing director of Jonathan Cape who published his 900-page debut novel in the UK, City of fire by Garth Risk Hallberg. However the increase in pages that Flipsnack's investigation revealed, not is what check with manuscripts is captain on his table. “High-profile books may be big, but me not are awash with proposals of publication of 200 thousand words. Novels by 250-350 pages they are the majority of the proposals I receive and I assume it is also the size of the majority of manuscripts circulating in publishing houses"
The bestseller lists in recent years have been dominated by series, from Harry Potter to 50 shades of gray by EL James.
I think i books they are becoming more spacious than long Bowler says. By altering page space with more generous line spacing and slightly larger font, publishers can increase the size of a book. It may be that theaudience of a kind like books more airy in what he buys.
A sense of the perceived value of money in a bulky book was important in the heyday of physical commerce, says literary agent Clare Alexander, and this factor may still influence some readers, but that alone does not explain the growth of volume of novels. I would say a compensation element è given since renewed interest in story or in short novel well conceived and narrated. These days, the real struggle is publishing an insignificantly sized book. As an agent, the hardest thing is to stay in the middle. Mid-table, mid-size, mid-career, everything in between is tough."
