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human
[General Fantasy] Why are all these books and tomes I find so short? Why are there bookcases full of only one or two different publications?

Avid adventurer and bibliophilic bookreader here. I've journeyed across many lands such as Tamriel, the Northern Realms and beyond, and across the Kingdom of Albion (all three many times over a large period of time), and many more. However I've noticed that in my efforts to learn more about the worlds I traverse, I'm left.... unsatisfied. There are countless books present on shelves, in bookstores or in stacks in numerous random locations. However the visage is a mere illusion!

In the Imperial City of Cyrodiil, I visited the First Edition bookstore, and was suprised to see that although hundreds of tomes lined the shelves and bookcases of the establishment, only a few dozen were listed in the shopkeep's trade manifest! On my travels throughout the Continent, I was frequently finding myself in others houses (with no detrimental ramifications I assure you), crypts, palaces and many other places. Bookshelves were lined with tomes and books, paperback and hardback alike. However attempting to search the shelves yielded a book or two at best, and not unique ones either. I've found 28 copies of *The Slaughter of Cintra*, 23 editions of *Tales of the Wild Hunt*, and gods-know how many copies of *What Shall Become of Temeria?*. Are these really the only books on display in all these places? Why can I only pick up a single book per shelf? Are the rest merely for show? This occurs throughout the realms of men, and other realms besides. 

In addition, *why* oh *why* are the majority of these tomes so short? I picked up a book titled *Religion and Life*, only to find that despite its hefty weight and roughly 250 pages betwixt its covers, it had but **one paragraph** of text! The same can be said for almost all books I found across my travels! In the Continent and Albion I found books ranging from a mere sentence of content to several pages at best, Cyrodiil and Skyrim fared better with a couple of pages to maybe a dozen, but regardless I'm still at a loss for lengthy tomes! Where are all the arduously written, hulking masses of written knowledge and fictional etchings that I expected to find? I know literacy isn't a prominent skill in many of these places, but still *I would assume* that scholars and noblemen would have written lengthier texts for others in their fields and spheres of influence to read.

So what gives? Am I only finding the editions reworked for low-attention-span peasantry? Are the writers less determined to pass on knowledge than I thought? Why are the books in these worlds so short *and* limited when I happen upon any number of random bookcases and bookstores?
gpt
Books have to be handwritten to be distributed. Few enough people know how to read and write, much less have the literacy and skill to write much of a book. Furthermore, the books that are going to be transcribed and distributed most widely and cheaply? That's gonna be the shortest of the short books. 

On top of that, what adventurer has time or patience to read an entire book? You just sat yourself down in a damp-ass bandit cave to grind through the complete biography of Barenziah? You read the interesting bits and get back to slaughtering. Or, in the case of the Lusty Argonian Maid, you get embarrassed and put the book down before somebody walks in on you.