Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools

I am always amazed how most business book authors take a simple idea that could be described in one page, and turn it into a 200+ page book with popularizing narrative. What's more amazing is that the ideas are usually commonsense, but due to human nature are seldom practiced.

As I see it there are 2 likely reasons for this.

1. You need enough paper to create an object with a noticeable mass that takes time to work all the way through. Too small or short and it doesn't feel worth it. Make it short enough and people could read it in the book store.

2. People are bad at applying a crystalized abstraction in day-to-day life. They are better at learning narratives and fitting the current situation to the closest learned narrative, and then acting out the part of the protagonist. Instead of explaining a statistic or explicit rule of thumb, it would be more effective to give a bunch of examples where someone successfully applies the rule and is rewarded. Those examples can take up many pages.

Many non-fiction books, you can get the gist by reading a blogger's summary, but I think the length of the book actually gives my brain time to digest and commit to permanent memory the idea(s) in the book.

Reading a 3 minute summary, once, I will easily forget the knowledge. But reading about the idea with different stories and other auxiliary information help me retain the principles much faster.