I Thought I Had Seen Short Books—Until I Found This One

14 Jan 2026 #books

For writers, the real challenge is to make readers finish books.

TikTok, Instagram, and endless feeds have turned us into skimmers. And as Smart Brevity says, our job as writers is to adapt to how readers consume content. Give them something fast.

Short non-fiction books, or mini books, are the answer for impatient readers.

A book doesn’t need 30,000 words. It could be a summary of 10 papers, a collection of personal stories, or your best posts—as long as it’s valuable even for one person, it’s worth publishing.

And to my surprise, after going down a rabbit hole, today I found a one-page book, This Book is One Page Long by Hassan Osman. Well, the book has 5 pages. I guess that’s the front matter, back matter, and one page of actual content.

If that doesn’t kill every excuse for writing a book, nothing will.