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Agreed. I remember when I was in my teens, I used to read all the time. I would sit for hours with my head stuck in a book, and get annoyed when I had stop to use the toilet or eat! Now, my mind is always wandering. The internet, as much as I love it, is partly to blame. There's just so much to see and do on it.

I do also agree that many books are fluffed up, so to speak, in order to meet publisher word counts. I know this happens in the publishing industry.

Agree, but partially. There's also the factor I mentioned that people tend to get a succint concept and fill it with fluff to pad word count until they have something they can market it as a book.

Third point is our attention economy: our time is valuable, and more content is created every minute that we can possible evaluate, much less consume. How can you tell what is worth your detailed, deep attention span? One way is read a few summaries and pick only the one that shows more potential.

I think the draw of this service is partially due to these three points.