I just finished Lola Shoneyin's book and it was just 245 pages, guess what i read it in one sitting.
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However, i bought IQ84 by Haruki Murakami, a 925 paged book and i could not even finish it. You know why? It was too much, although i did enjoy the plot a bit but that could not even buy my allegiance sorry.
I understand that writers cannot stand when their books are hacked and shortened but writers need to understand the business of writing, and why too-long books are more difficult to sell. As explained by Huffington Post "There are in fact readership, publisher, and cost considerations that factor into why the industry standard for the length of a book is 80,000 words, and I would argue that in today's publishing climate, less is more. Here's why:
Attention spans are shorter. People are reading more than ever, but there's more competition than ever for those readers' attention--and not just with other books. As an author you're competing against online content like blogs and news sites, and against anything readers read. If you can, aim for under 80,000 words. I've been working with novelists and memoirists who are writing 60,000-word books, something I would have discouraged ten years ago. Writers will argue with me on this point, I know, reminding me of crazy-long bestsellers (Goldfinch, anyone?) and pointing to authors' success with long books (J.K. Rowling, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Ken Follett), but these authors are the exception, and most readers simply don't have the attention span for long narratives.
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So if you're just starting, aim short; if you're running long and are pre-publication (and you can stomach it), work with an editor to cut cut cut.
Overly long books are a red flag to agents and editors. While there will always be space in the literary landscape for authors' magnum opuses, you shouldn't feel that your first book needs to be one. In fact, you're better off if it's not. Putting yourself on the map with something more modest and reasonable is a good strategy. Long books are a big risk, and they're difficult to sell because of agents' and editors' bandwidth. Publishers, for the most part, do not want to grapple with the higher costs of publishing a long book.
The longer the book, the more expensive it is to produce. Most writers aren't thinking about the length of their book and its correlation to various expenses, but it's all publishers are thinking about. And if you're self-publishing, or footing your own production or printing bill, you need to be thinking about it too. The longer the book, the more expensive the copyedit, design, and printing. If you have a 400-page book, you're cutting into your profits to keep your price point low. And yet you want to keep the price point competitive to, well, compete. You'll discover if you end up printing your book print on demand (the way of the future) that a single book is expensive, and it behooves you to keep your page count low. The difference in cost between a 60,000- and 100,000-word edit is about 20 hours of work, and about $1.50/unit on printing. So it's a big deal--no matter who's footing the bill.
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