I read lots of non fiction books. I think the same.
Most of them could condense it's contents in a couple of chapters.
It would be great to have modular books, like Emacs manual. If sections where independent modules you could rearange the book or even create books from a series of sections from diferent books.
That way you could choose different outlines, maybe predefined by the author like, to create books tailed to your needs:
This is what's done with sufficiently academic books in the hard sciences. They are so modular, that books are simply topics with each chapter written by a chosen author, and those authors will treat the chapters they've written similarly to papers they've had published.
I think if you dive deeper in to more rigorous nonfiction books you'll find that less time is spent on the 'pop' side of popsci literature. Which might be where you're encountering that fluff.
I hate to bring it up, but AI would be perfect for that. It could create logical segues between the new chapter order. So you could basically create books on demand based on real content with only the AI providing context.
Most of them could condense it's contents in a couple of chapters.
It would be great to have modular books, like Emacs manual. If sections where independent modules you could rearange the book or even create books from a series of sections from diferent books.
That way you could choose different outlines, maybe predefined by the author like, to create books tailed to your needs:
- General Ideas.
- General Ideas + observed cases
- Mixed outline (Concepts + Stories + Conclusions)
- All details about one topic