Books are steadily increasing in size

Books are steadily increasing in size, a survey has found out that the average number of pages has grown by 25% over the last 15 years.

Using about 2,500 books that appeared on New York Times bestseller and notable books lists and Google’s annual survey of the most discussed books, the study reveals that the average length has increased from 320 pages in 1999 to 400 pages in 2014.

According to James Finlayson from Vervesearch, who carried out the survey for the interactive publisher Flipsnack, says there’s a “relatively consistent pattern of growth year on year” that has added approximately 80 pages to the average size of the books surveyed since 1999. Guardian UK reported.

For Finlayson, much of this shift can be explained by the industry’s shift towards digital. 'When you pick up a large book in a shop, you can sometimes be intimidated, whereas on Amazon the size of a book is just a footnote that you don’t really pay all that much attention to.'

He added that 'The rise of digital reading is also a factor, i  always hold off buying really big books until I’m going on holiday, because I don’t want to lug them around in my bag. But if you have a big book on a Kindle, that’s not a consideration.'

A look at some of this year's award-winning book like Donna Tartt, Chigozie Obioma, Chimamanda Adichie, Jonathan Franzen, Hanya Yanagihara and most recently Marlon James clearly tells us that the literary establishment loves long books too.

Literary agent Clare Alexander told The Guardian UK that “people who love to read appear to prefer a long and immersive narrative, the very opposite of a sound bite or snippets of information that we all spend our lives downloading from Google."

Do you love reading big books? Take our poll below.

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