

Ask HN: Why is every technology book 500-1000 pages - quietthrow

 I am trying to catch up with Java and am looking for a concise book that can get me caught up with it. To my surprise I couldnt find anythign within &lt;200 pages. Upon searching more for different technologies I realized every book out there is 500+ pages. Its almost like the publishers wont except anything less than that and as a result authors are forced to writing long books. Do anybody else find this frustrating ?<p>Would like to hear the communities thoughts on how they learn&#x2F;brush up on technologies in this era of limited time and unlimited distractions ?
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ScottWhigham
As an author, I can say that much of the length of my books/courses comes down
to experience in the classroom from the previous teach/course or from feedback
I get from students. A contrived example:

1) For product release 2.0 in 2000, I create a 2-day course and write a
companion 300-pg book. I teach said course and students say, "Dang... not what
I hoped for. It's too much intro and not enough stuff that I can use to
accomplish"

2) Marketing/sales team comes to me and says, "We need more beef. The feedback
is that people have trouble installing and configuring and, as a result, the
rest of the book/course is tough. Also, we need to highlight these new
features"

3) Version 3.0 of said software comes out and, to accommodate everything and
everyone, the course becomes a 3-day adventure and the book is now 400 pages.
The feedback this time is "Okay, now we're seeing trouble at the basics - we
need more time spent on x and y"

4) Version 4.0 comes with a 4-day course and a 500-page book. The sales team
pushes back and says, "No way we can sell a 4-day course. Make it 3-days. And
by the way: don't remove any content!" Yikes - that's impossible. The
compromise then is that I keep high-level content (overviews, introductions)
to sections and move the content from the course to the book. I then have to
expand the book by 100 pages (it's now a 600 page book).

5) Version 5.0 comes out in 2010 and it's a total re-design of the software.
There are also completely new features that are very complex. Sales says,
"Great job on the last course - don't change anything, just add the new
features!" Hello 800 page book!

6) It's 2013 and now every pubs manager knows this cycle backwards and
forwards. A new tech comes out and the pubs folks go ahead and tell the
author, "Don't bother writing a succinct intro - go ahead and flesh it out. It
needs to be at least 500 pages or else people are going to complain that it
doesn't have enough meat and weight."

"But Scott, this is your problem. A better author could show in 200 pages what
you took 800 pages to show!"

There's simply a minimum amount of time that it takes to teach a topic. It's
all about "scope" \- if the scope of the book is to teach you the basics to a
programming language, it just can't be done in 200 pages for any sufficiently
complex language. I think that the way to approach this is to (a) design
design an actual in-person training course in which real human students will
sit in a room with you, and your job is then to teach them a skill that they
will have to take back to their job (which paid handsomely to send them).
Given a 6.5 hour training day (9:00-4:30 with breaks, lunch = ~6.5 hours of
training time), how many days of training is your course? A given day is
probably 150-300 pages in a book. If you try to "Teach Java in 6.5 hours", it
just doesn't work. You might need 3-5 days to learn the true basics of the
language in such a way that you can "think in Java" (which is the basic
starting point). Bam - 1000+ page book.

~~~
quietthrow
May be I am being a typical engineer, but looks like sales and marketing, as
usual, work in a 'vacuum' and as a result the impact to the overall outcome
can be somewhat negative. while the course might be successfull (read it made
the money it set out to), its systemic effect is incentives are placed in the
wrong place.

I feel more and more we are seeing the need for technical sales and technical
marketing people, basically people who understand both sides.

None the less its an interesting problem. Would love to attempt to disupt it
by providing real value.

~~~
ScottWhigham
I can say that, in my experience, the sales/marketing folks are never truly
technical people; they are sales/marketing people who've been trained about
the basics of the technology. However, every company I've worked with always
has a technical person review important things like table of contents, chapter
outlines, and such. And then there's almost always a technical editor. To what
degree they "work" is dependent upon many factors though.

I think sales/marketing work, in this regard, as a response from their
customer base. If people are saying, "Well, we would spend $30,000 to send
eight people to this class if only it featured generics", then what do you
think happens next? Big money talks. That's why so many mature products that
have "new features" are often features that less than 1% of the companies
would use - that 1% of user sales represents 20% of revenue (or something to
that effect). It's fine to wax philosophical and debate, "What should a
training course or book do?" However, the companies writing the big checks
almost always determine what goes in and to what degree. It's hard to sell a
training course using phrases like, "We'll teach you the things that you won't
use in your real-world job!"

------
lumberjack
I don't know what you mean by "catch up with Java" but when I was getting
acquainted with Java for the first time, I remember searching all over the
place for a good in depth yet terse tutorial only to realize that the official
docs and official tutorial were the best thing out there.

~~~
quietthrow
Personally I feel I know java from J2EE/2004-5 days After that I have been
doing more non tech work then tech work. As a example I missed out on
annotations, and everything after that. While I do know what annotations and
generics etc do. I feel my knowledge has gaps because I learned it in bits and
pieces (read I learnt about it in passing when I need to). As a result I feel
the need to 'brush up' \- basically looking to feel confident such that I have
a good grip on Java as it is today. If you have any specific tips on how I can
brush up, I am all ears.

------
inetsee
It's driven partly by the economics of publishing technical books.

Technical books are often more expensive to develop; there may be more
authors, technical editors, illustrators, etc. working on a technical book. A
book may have only one or a few authors listed on the cover, but if you look
at the acknowledgements page there may be a dozen or more people involved.

Technical books also typically have a smaller potential audience than other
books; you can count the number of technical blockbusters on the fingers of
one hand.

As a result, publishers must price technical books relatively high. In order
to convince buyers that their book is worth the higher price, they make it
longer. In the case of Java books, they throw in huge appendices that cost
them very little in development cost. Most Java books include the interface
specifications of the complete set of Java libraries; information which is
widely available online.

Your best bet is to find a highly rated book, skim the first 50 or more pages
to get past the parts where the author explains why his book is the best in
the field, then stop reading when you hit the first appendix. I would also
recommend buying the e-book version of the book; being able to electronically
search through a technical book is hugely valuable.

------
informatimago
The answer is quite simple: in a tutorial, or in a book covering technology X,
there is necessarily more material, than what is found in the reference
documentations and specifications of said technology X. That's because
technical documentations are concise (if only to avoid inconsistencies).

Unfortunately, most technologies start with references that are already over
1000 pages! Check any standard or language reference, or framework reference.
There are several frameworks with more than 1000 classes! imagine how many
printed pages for the reference documatation! A book about those frameworks
that wouldn't even be exhaustive could very well be over 10,000 or 100,000
pages.

------
ig1
Buyers evaluate a books price by it's length. That is they're more willing to
pay $50 for a 500 page book than a 50 page book.

It's completely irrational, nevertheless it a behaviour that even completely
rational people display.

~~~
brudgers
It is not irrational. Books, before all else, are primarily entertainment.
Programming books don't so much compete with the web on content as on medium:
Reading a book, for people who buy books, is more pleasurable than sitting at
the keyboard.

~~~
hackinthebochs
You're absolutely right about this. I vastly prefer reading a technical book
rather than piecing together information from online sources. I like just
sitting back and being immersed in a subject. I enjoy that I get a complete
and logical tour of a subject from a book. The length of a book is signal with
regards to this (on any technical subject worth reading a book about at
least).

------
digitalzombie
I've been reading node.js books and they're around 300 pages.

I mean Java is a freaking huge language. Generics in Java alone is a giant
book.

It depends on the tech I guess...

~~~
chris_wot
Why is generics so huge? You can cover it in a chapter, possibly two.

~~~
quietthrow
Completely agree with your question. I think if the author can't explain it
conceptually in a chapter or two may be the author dosnt know it really well
or should employ a ghost writer

------
taheris
The economics of publishing are such that the authors choose to add every area
they can on a given topic so that people won't reject their book for another
on the basis of one missing item.

As others point out, it is also a crude proxy that buyers use to evaluate the
worth of the book without reading the entire thing.

Of course, there are exceptions. One of the reasons that The C Programming
Language by Kernighan and Ritchie is so popular is its conciseness.

------
marcocampos
The most ridiculous example is the 5th edition of "Learning Python" by Mark
Lutz. It's supposed to be an introduction to the Python language and it's
almost 1600 pages long. The 1st edition was less than 400, the 2nd was 550,
the 3rd was 750 and the 4th around 1200 pages.

It's a very nice book, don't get me wrong, but I think it's intimidating for a
beginner.

~~~
quietthrow
Agreed. Forget the beginner, even for the person know works with it everyday,
it can raise the question about how much they know and lot of it is noise. I
can understand if the book is a desk reference - thats a different story. but
to learn..come on. I think this thread is common in new papers too...nytimes
wsj etc. all thier articles are like 4 pages, when the whole point is to be
concise. I do understand that a 4 page article generates 4 times more ad
revenue. "The smartest minds of our generation are trying to figure out how to
display and get people to click on ads" \- :(

------
sitkack
Many books are written by multiple authors to reduce the latency to market so
there is inherent repetition between the chapters along with the
(non-)manditory boilerplate that should be replaced by open content.

More concise, better written content takes longer to write and revise. If I
had more time, I would write a better response to you.

~~~
quietthrow
As usual, incentives are in the wrong place.

------
chris_wot
Stroustrup's _The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition_ is 1,368 pages long.
It has a fair amount of repetition, but it makes sense because it gives an
overview, then quickly gets more detailed as you go through the book.

Personally, I like that. But then, I love reading computer books.

------
chiph
Back in the days when physical bookshops mattered, you wanted a thick spine on
the book to take up more shelf space, and give you more room for a bold title
to attract the eye.

~~~
jonjacky
A friend who once worked at a bookstore once told me this. The way he put it
was: publishers want their books to take up a lot of shelf space so there is
less room for the competitors.

