That was my first thought. Maybe it’s not “books are getting shorter,” but “publishers are getting cheaper.” Decreasing margins, decreasing font size, etc could all explain a diminishing page count to save on printing costs.

That said, from looking into publishing, it seems like consensus is anything over 100k words (approx 400 pages) is basically unsellable unless you’re Stephen King or something. It’s not clear to me if this has always been the case.

Many of the longer novels in classic literature were originally serialized, and only later compiled into the lengthy tomes we know today.

Yep! Count of Monte Cristo is known as a long read but it was originally serialized. You can kinda tell too, the plot meanders a couple times. Nonetheless extremely entertaining, I'd highly recommend.

Same for Count of Monte Cristo and some of his other works. Also Don Quixote if I recall correctly. I actually read them one to two chapters a week to stay on a similar to original schedule.

I have wondered if the reading of Don Quixote serially was a very different experience from reading it as a novel. It was a serial satire, so I could see reading the "new episode" every week being funny. Before I got side-tracked, I was reading it like any other novel and, while any particular episode is set up comedically, Don Quixote's mostly harmless delusional actions being given exponentially more brutal responses I found increasingly depressing.

There’s a really great app called Serial Reader that breaks books in the public domain down into ~15 minute chunks and “delivers” the issue to you every day. The app is free (no ads, even!) but you can pay a small fee for a few extra features like scheduling the delivery days/time and being able to read ahead. I think it’s like $3 or maybe $5? I can’t recall. But I’m pretty sure it’s a one person operation. I have no affiliation with the app other than being a happy paying user.

Don Quixote was never a serial, it was published in full in a 4-parts volume (there is a second part that was written a decade later though).

Slightly related, but I'm a fan of web serialized fiction (fanfics, but also original works like Worm, Worth the Candle, Mother of Learning, Unsong, etc), and when I occasionally order paper copies I'm always astounded at just how physically large they are, in a way that doesn't come across in a purely digital format.

I should note that this rebuts the idea that long-form fiction is disappearing, it's just not getting physically published, because the internet remains the best way to distribute information (and often make a living, since patreon can often end up paying more than a publisher).

Btw, got any interesting book recommendations? (And yeah, I already know about r/rational ;))

Seems like we both got very similar book tastes. And to recepriociate, I think you might enjoy: - Pretty much everything by Ted Chiang, but especially Understand - Asimov's Nightfall - Greg Egan's Reasons to be happy

Pretty much all of Dickens and Zola.

Specifically, works published from roughly 1830 through the first quarter or half of the 20th century, driven by falling publication costs and rising literacy. Charles Dickens on particular developed the model, with The Pickwick Papers, published in 1836. Another notable work, the Sherlock Holmes series debuted in 1887 ("A Study in Scarlet").

Earlier novels (relatively few in number) tended to appear as their own works in whole form, so far as I'm aware. Though many may have been adaptations of other works --- sagas or legends (e.g., the Faust legend), plays, and other forms.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_(literature)>

Typical is 60-90k but 100k is pretty standard for SFF

It's the best proxy for retail space consumed.

Not just page size and typeface, how about those books with 100+ chapters, clearly just to increase the page count, as a new chapter ends the current page and the new chapter starts halfway down a new page. And don't get me started about those crazy large margins.