Save time with 15-minute book summaries

Shortform gives you concise summaries of books you haven’t had time yet to read. In 15 minutes you’ll grasp a book’s core ideas. You can then decide to read the full book if it resonates. Shortform covers 30+ genres but focuses on business, tech, self-improvement, spirituality, history, and politics. My summary take: I appreciate the thorough, smart summaries weaving in ideas from related books, but given the alternatives, I wish more books were covered and that the app and site were more robust.

Smart summaries

Thankfully the write-ups aren’t automated. Shortform hires smart people to read and reflect on these books. I find the summaries to be clear and well-written. Start with a one-minute quick guide for a book you’re curious about. Then optionally dig deeper with a 15-minute full summary.

See how a book is connected to others

One of the things I like best about Shortform is that the summaries tie together related books. I recently read the summary of Decisive, by Chip and Dan Heath, a book I read several years ago. I wanted a reminder about the key ideas. I appreciated the summary’s references to several other books on decision-making, from The Art of Choosing and The Paradox of Choice to Thinking in Bets and Thinking Fast and Slow. Other summary services focus on the book itself but don’t bring in parallel helpful references that show how a book fits into the broader field of thinking.

Short activities to apply books’ ideas

Answer short questions the platform supplies within its summaries to apply the ideas in a book to your own life. In the Decisive summary, for example, I was prompted to consider an upcoming decision and to analyze various aspects through the lens of the book’s frameworks. As a teacher, I appreciate this extra step to help me retain the information and ideas.

Mobile, Web and exportable highlights

I like reading the book summaries on my phone, but you can also read them on the Web. You can make highlights within a summary and sync these to Notion or Readwise. Here’s why I love Readwise for my book and online reading highlights.

Articles, not just books

In addition to book summaries Shortform publishes short explainers on diverse topics — from cryptocurrency to psychedelics. The summary pieces are smart, authoritative and reference numerous academic and media sources. But I don’t consider these to be comprehensive — they’re usually primers to help you get started on a topic.

📖 2 brief excerpts from Shortform summaries

Sprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz

Element #3: Building Your Team — “According to Knapp, Zeratksy, and Kowitz, your sprint team should have no more than seven members. Having more than seven hinders the decision-making process and makes it difficult to maintain the group's attention. Start by picking two essential roles, which they call the Decider and the Facilitator. For clarity, we'll call them the team leader and the sprint coordinator…“

A World Without Email by Cal Newport

Our Current Approach to Work: The Hyperactive Hive Mind Workflow — Newport argues that most knowledge workers structure their work days around responding to unscheduled emails and instant messages rather than around the knowledge work they were hired to do. A 2019 study showed that the average employee sent and received 126 emails a day, and another study showed that employees check their instant messenger app once a minute on average and their inboxes 77 times a day. A third study indicated that many knowledge workers can only perform about an hour of uninterrupted knowledge work a day. The rest of their day is spent responding to a barrage of incoming emails and messages…”

Limitations and Considerations

Limited book selection

The service is still young, so the library of summaries isn’t yet robust. Because they cover a wide range of subjects, no topic is comprehensively covered. And because they work methodically to create thoughtful summaries, the production process is slow. A handful of new books are added weekly. There are many books I’d love to have summaries of that aren’t available, both contemporary and classic. Shortform works best if you enjoy discovering new books, not just searching for specific book summaries.

Opinionated writeups

The summarizers aim to position each book among others. That results, sometimes, in summaries that are a blend of summary and analysis. In summarizing A World Without Email, the team omitted a section of the book about the history of email because they decided it wasn’t crucial to the book’s primary message. I generally don’t object to these excisions, because anyone summarizing has to make such decisions. But if you prefer a straightforward section-by-section textual summary with less independent analysis and fewer external references, you might prefer one of the alternatives below, like Headway or Uptime.

Minimalist app and site

The app and site are functional but simple. You can search for books and read summaries, but don’t expect much more. A neat audio feature means you can now listen to some of the summaries, but otherwise the app and site are basic. In comparison with the flashy visual summary apps below, Shortform is vanilla. But if you’re focused on depth of thought and analysis, the visuals may matter less.

Cost

Summaries are expensive to produce, because humans make them and it takes lots of time to read deeply and write well. So Shortform costs $24/month, though they’ve agreed to a Wonder Tools reader discount, which brings the price down to $12.97/month for an annual subscription. For some people that’s still a lot, and other options below are cheaper.

Alternatives

Blinkist is the most famous of the summary services, claiming 23 million users, with an average rating of 4.76 stars after >100,000 app store reviews. A vast library means I was able to find summaries of many of the books by Alain de Botton, one of my favorite authors. And there’s some original learning material here, like an audio guide to slow productivity by YouTuber Rowena Tsai. Two other features I like: I can share my account free with a friend or family member. And I can send summaries straight to my Kindle. Cost: $100/year

Headway This service’s visual explainers are its strength. Tap through a series of cards to grasp core book ideas or complex concepts. I like that the 15-minute book summaries are broken into 10 easy-to-digest cards, with short quotes pulled out as “insights” that you can save, share or add to your notebook in the app. Note that the summaries aren’t as thorough as Shortform’s at incorporating references to other books. The 39 question onboarding online is a bit too much. Cost: $60/year

Uptime offers 5-minute “hacks” for getting a quick sense of books, podcasts, online courses, and documentaries. Like Headway, the app mixes in visuals in an appealing way, so you feel like you’re swiping through an educational Instagram, rather than reading dense text. You tap through screens just as you do on social platforms. You can switch audio on or off to listen to the summary. Occasionally a short video pops up, like a 30-second clip of author Mark Manson talking about concepts in his book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. Cost: $56/year

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