Rob Walling recently wrote a blog post called Why Startup Founders Should Stop Reading Business Books. At first the title made me scoff, but when I read the post in detail, his arguments made a lot of sense.

Many business books are actually a short paper with some good points; the main ideas are often found in the introduction and maybe the first chapter. Sometimes the whole point of the book is contained in the flap copy. But a book, to be a book, has to have weight. Translation: the page count has to be much more than 25. So many redundant pages are added.

Rob’s target audience of startup web entrepreneurs doesn’t have time to read extra pages. They are busy “doing” and usually running their businesses by the seat of their pants. In this context, his advice makes sense. (And he provides an out to read for fun and interest, so Malcolm Gladwell is still “okay” – whew!)

What Rob misses is that not everyone can absorb and integrate new information in a meaningful way just by reading the bullet points of a PowerPoint presentation or short article. Most of us need stories to remember and apply the lessons. In order for the information to stick in our brains, and therefore be useful, we need context and repetition.

So maybe startup founders should stop reading business books, but the rest of us could benefit from reading great books that share valuable lessons. The question is, Which books are worth taking the time to read in full? What’s your take?

High on the wish list for many of our clients are books that can be read in 2-3 hours, tops. With Twitter conversations and other online articles talking about this very thing, it seems our clients aren’t alone. This is definitely a trend authors and publishers, both traditional and online, should pay attention to.

With the average Canadian working nearly 40 hours per week and our neighbours to the south even longer,  there isn’t a lot of time left over for things like reading — especially a traditional 300-page business book that could take hours and hours to finish. So if authors and publishers want to get non-fiction works into the hands of consumers, it could be strategic to significantly prune those longer books.

Quicker to write and get out to market, this easily digestible style of book could compete with magazines and online publications, allowing consumers a quick and timely read, but still with substance. However, these shorter-format books need to feel sizeable enough, both in terms of experience and takeaway, to justify the price.

The challenge will be to find that sweet spot: the point where price, value, and length all come together to create a book that flies off the shelves and opens an entirely new niche market.

What’s your take? Is short and sweet a better model for non-fiction?

Robert Kiyosaki is the latest business author to take the collaborative approach to writing a book. His newest effort, Conspiracy of the Rich, is being released chapter by chapter on the book’s website. Readers must register to view the full text of each chapter, and are then encouraged to share their thoughts on each topic.

From the website:

Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money will be an interactive project in which Kiyosaki will not only offer his written ‘draft’ chapters online, but invite feedback, commentary and questions from readers across the globe via website forums and blogs. Reader feedback will then be incorporated into the book as it is written and released, chapter by chapter, on the Internet.