Books are great, and non-fiction books definitely have a pivotal role in the transmission of human knowledge, but I have to admit that many of them are unnecessary. Having read a large number of exceedingly good blog posts, in which talented authors condense profound insight down into a few thousand words, I have started noticing when a book really could have just been a blog post.

I do not necessarily mean to denigrate the ideas put forth in these books, only to observe that sometimes less is more; after all, a reader’s time is a finite resource. Obviously, any book that covers multiple ideas, requires many examples to be worked through, or addresses a complex enough concept, is probably justified in taking time over. That being said, the profound is not always complex, and a concise expression of an idea is more likely to be more widely read. Unfortunately, expressing something concisely often takes more effort, and in many cases there will be more money in a book deal than in creating a viral blog post, so the effort is not worthwhile for the author…

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