Long Form Storytelling

What is it?

If you’re under the impression that short-form content is completely taking over the world, think again. Long-form content is far from dead. Right now we’re seeing a resurgence of content in a longer format, from well-loved TV shows releasing episodes weekly, to the continuing rise of podcasts, and resurgence of book sales.

Long-form content covers everything from in-depth articles, case studies and white papers to books, plays, podcasts, films and TV shows. It’s an umbrella term for those longer formats that give us the kind of deep dive into subjects that a TikTok video just can’t.

Long-form has a long and distinguished history, taking in great works of literature, theatre, film and journalism. For centuries, longer epic works have been serialised, published in volumes over time, or performed in instalments.

Notable highlights include: the serialisation of Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, Wagner’s epic opera the Ring Cycle, Proust’s work of literary genius A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, and Stoppard’s theatrical trilogy The Coast of Utopia. More recently, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy included a Booker Prize-winning novel and a sell-out stage adaptation.

Why should I care?

People are making time to listen, read and watch longer stories, partly as a result of restricted movement during the pandemic. Podcast listener numbers are set to keep rising over the coming years, and although book sales dipped over the past decade, they’re starting to recover.

Netflix has pulled in huge numbers of UK users over the past few years. Around 80% of people aged 18-34 now have access to the streaming giant, closely followed by 70% of 35–44-year-olds. As a result, Netflix is targeting the remaining 50% of 55-64-year-olds who are not yet subscribers.

Long-form blog posts are giving short-form pieces a run for their money in marketing terms too. According to this study, long-form articles generate more shares and links than short-form media, while also performing better on search engines. Social journalism platform Medium, developed to encourage people to publish posts longer than the character limit of Twitter, now has over 100 million monthly unique visitors.

Where short-form excels at attention grabbing content, long-form gives issues room to breathe. Space to explore subjects more broadly, deepen audience engagement and strengthen relationships over time. Long-form content is an investment – it builds authority and demonstrates expertise, retaining value long after it’s published. It deals with nuance, complexity and layers of meaning in a way that short form doesn’t usually have time or space to manage.

As we face burnout and a large-scale mental health crisis following the pandemic, we’re all seeking out purpose, meaning, depth and value in the things we consume. People are making the time in their lives to consume long-form content. Now is the time to invest.

Book Clubs

As we lean towards more enriching activities in our recovery from the pandemic, reading and book clubs have become a way to invest in our health and deliver social connection at the same time. From big celebrities recommending book picks to small communities hosting meetups on Zoom, we’re embracing book clubs like never before.

Reese Witherspoon’s hugely popular book club has more than 2 million Instagram followers and 38 of its picks have made the New York Times bestsellers list. The Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon promotes a list of summer reads and Barack Obama shares an annual list of his favourite books, music and movies with millions across the globe.

Online community Goodreads has around 90 million users and views of TikTok’s BookTok are in the billions. Last year, a TikTok account called Betty’s Book List gained hundreds of thousands of followers for its ingenious, short book recommendations expressed as the dilemma of the main character. It’s an inspired meeting of short-form and long-form content, delivered with humour and creativity.

Amnesty International recently launched Reading Rebels, a subscription book club for children. Each month, it shares stories and activities exploring values like kindness, fairness, and equality, with a guide for grown-ups. Meanwhile, charities including Maggie’s, Mind and Stormzy’s Merky Foundation have benefited from book collaborations. Publishing startup Storyhouse promises that “every future Storyhouse title sold in the UK will have a charity partner”, following the release of The Last Seaweed Pie, which donated 3% of the cover price to the Marine Conservation Society.

Literature Trends

What was once given the derogatory label ‘chick lit’, has been reframed as positive female-written content, supported by Hello Sunshine, the media company behind Reese’s Book Club, which “puts women at the centre of every story we create, celebrate and discover… shining a light on where women are now and helping them chart a new path forward.”

The self-help genre is booming and, alongside it, we’re seeing a trend in authors telling their own stories of personal struggle so that readers can learn and grow. Books like Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey, Will by Will Smith and Educated by Tara Westover have all topped bestseller lists. We’re also seeing a growing number of books from underrepresented voices, and books supporting the urgent movement towards diversity, equality and inclusion.

How we consume books is changing too. Audiobooks have been around since the 1930s, but have become increasingly popular through apps like Audible. Last year saw an even steeper rise in audiobook sales. While the audiobook market may be growing, it’s still nowhere near the size of the print market, suggesting audio will work alongside print as an alternative option. The same can be said for e-books, a growing market that’s still outstripped by print. People still want to buy physical books and, thanks to online sellers like Amazon, they can now do it without leaving home.

The Return of 'Serial'isation

The publishing format pioneered by Charles Dickens is making a comeback. In the wake of the binge-watch-inducing, all-episodes-at-once release model established by Netflix, lots of popular shows are returning to the weekly release model. Beloved shows like Snowpiercer on Netflix, This Is Us on Prime Video and Succession on HBO are delivered in instalments that make up a story so good viewers are willing to wait. As a result, we’re seeing a revival of appointment-to-view TV, except now we can watch each week’s new episode at our own convenience, and chat about it on social media afterwards.

Described as “the podcast to end all podcasts”, Serial reminded us that the weekly release format can work exceptionally well for audio stories. Back in 2014, Serial’s first season marked the cultural breakthrough for podcasts – a medium that champions episodic release and is now well established in the mainstream.

The Beatles: Get Back, Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary, took long form to the extreme. With a total runtime of almost eight hours, each of its three episodes was between two and three hours long and premiered on three consecutive days. It’s length didn’t seem to deter fans. The docuseries prompted the re-entry of the album ‘Let It Be’ into the top 40 album chart and as the NME reported, “According to Nielsen, 503 million minutes were streamed across the three episodes over the first four days... The Beatles: Get Back placed seventh on the most viewed original streaming programmes that week.”