Self Help Must Be Long

2024-09-29

Be Brief and To The Point

Self-help books are comically verbose, and usually unhelpful. They’re not badly written so to speak, but if they were maximally helpful they would be shorter, and more direct.

I was tipped off to the Strunk & White elements of style by a Steve Shives video. This coincided with talks I had seen about “Smart Brevity”. To improve my own communication skill I’ve been looking for similar resources and books. This seemingly inevitably led to digging through the deluge of self-help books. “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” “Dress for Success,” etc. etc.

Each book is striking in how long they are. And they must be.

The core premise behind each book is that you will pay money to learn what the book has. Each book promises a blueprint or a remedy for some problem that you have or to improve you in a substantial way.

The reason these books must be long is psychology.

If a book is short then it is not worth very much

Why it Matters

For my communication a shorter article, summary, or a more concisely written deep-dive is better.

I am focusing on improving my communication. Writing is imminently accessible and I found that practicing my written communication also helps my spoken communication.

There is a lot of information in the world today and AI creates more of it. To keep our time valuable and well-used, it’s important to crate to-the-point and built-to-purpose content.

Finally, I am (currently) not selling anything. It’s important for me to understand how others communicate, where they succeed and fail, and most difficult of all to synthesize those findings and apply (or discard) them. Looking at how this class of literature, there’s a clear pattern and I understand it to be shaped by capitalism.

As an aside, the “Why it Matters,” tag line is from Axios, and it’s a pretty good help. I think it’s a bit forward, but maybe that’s a good thing. I am not convinced I should always use it.

Small is Bad

Humans want the “best,” in any situation. We want the safest, or cheapest, or healthiest. When applied to books, we are reminded to “Not judge a book by its cover.” Why? Because we do judge books by their cover.

So if the core premise of your book is to sell many of them on the guise of helping people you should do the following:

Have an attractive cover
Have several endorsements (Ethos)
Not be too long (if it’s intimidating, people may get discouraged)
Not be too short (if it’s too short, then surely it must be oversimple)

Therefore, each of these self-help books must be at least 200 pages paperback, and covered in people saying it’s great.

This apparently works as far as book presentation goes. I don’t think this is the full sum of what is happening behind the scenes.

Lessons learned or lessons observed:

Appearances matter
Appeals should be diverse (Pathos, Logos, Ethos)
A digestible book is about 200 pages paperback.

I’m not sure if I learned anything salient about Title making. A few patterns jump out:

Active / Imperative Voice: “Do the Work,” “Girl, Stop Apologizing,” “Leave the Office Earlier,” “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man,” “Be Here Now,”
‘Noun’ and ‘Some difficult thing’: “Families and How to Survive Them,” “Life and How to Survive it,”
Leading Statements / Questions: “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking”, “How Are We to Live,” “Am I still Autistic?,”
Evocative Images: “Letters to a Young Brother,” “A New Earth,” “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari,”
Philosophical-sounding or Invoking an important title: “The 8th Habit,” “The Importance of being Idle,” “The Tao of Wu,” “The Four Agreements”
List or Compendiums: “7 Habbits,” “How to Work a Room”
Visionary or fantasy: “The 4-Hour Body,” “I Will Teach You to Be Rich,” “A Return to Love”
Confrontational: “Loserthink,” “Everything is Fcked,” “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fck,” “Quiet Power”

Here is Wikipedia’s list of such books - If you are looking to name something which needs attention for itself.

Small is Good

After hearing about Smart Brevity and reading more from practitioners, I came to the conclusion that short is best. It’s best to say few words at a reasonable pace. My goals are to build community (help others), contribute useful knowledge and findings, and grow as a person - your goals may not align with mine.

Doing these things efficiently requires fewer words.