the great shrinkening (opens in new tab)

When traced through literary history, there’s a clear trend of smaller and smaller books, War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy, 1869): ~587,000 words. Ulysses (James Joyce, 1922): ~265,000 words. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (JK Rowling, 1997): ~77,000 words. Convenience Store Woman (Sayaka Murata, 2016): ~35,000 words. and it is not merely coincidence that, less people are reading books as well.