I think we’ve all heard the phrase that “leaders are readers.” I’m convinced that one thing that sets growing leaders apart is the fact that they feed themselves and intellectually challenge themselves through interesting experiences and reading books.
That’s why my ears perked up when I heard about Get Abstract. It’s a book summary service where, for a membership fee, you can select various books that they’ve condensed into a five-page summary. Now, I read a decent amount of books per year, but I thought this would be an interesting way for me to “read” some books that I normally would not have purchased.
So before I totally spill the guts on my experience with Get Abstract, let me first share a screen shot on how it actually works.
There are two price points:
1. The silver. For $89 per year you can download up to 30 book summaries. The good thing is that they do have a quite large database of books (mostly business and leadership), so I think most people would be able to find something of interest.
2. The gold. In the gold package, you can choose between a 6 month subscription for $179, or you can buy a year at a time for $299, which gives you some savings.
I’ll say up front that they do have a 30 day money back guarantee if you read less than 7 books, so taking the plunge seems a lot less scary if you don’t find it useful. I ended up going with the $179 plan. After browsing their online catalog, I quickly downloaded three books: The World Cafe, Confessions of A Public Speaker, and The Truth About Leadership. One really positive thing is that they offer books in different formats including PDF’s, Kindle, and audio. True to advertising, it took me about 5 minutes to study through and read the five pages of content of the first book.
Each of the book summaries are divided into a few different sections:
1. Ratings: Here the book is rated between overall, applicability, innovation, and style.
2. Take-Aways: This is a series of about ten bullet points with some of the main ideas of the book.
3. What You Will Learn: In this section there’s usually a breakdown of about 3-4 things overall that will be addressed.
4. Recommendation: This covers the “Why should I care about this author?” question and gives a brief bio and what makes him/her an expert in the given field.
5. Abstract: This is the meat of the section. If there are 8 main principles that the author is addressing, there will be 8 little sections. Usually each chapter is condensed in to about 1-2 paragraphs.
6. Quotes: The summaries finish with a section on about 10 selected quotes from the book.
The Bottom Line
This service ultimately didn’t work for me for one primary reason: people remember stories and narratives, not bullet points. I would often finish one of the books and not really be able to remember what I read. Because they’re trying to condense a whole chapter into one or two paragraphs, they leave out stories–the soul of each chapter–and what actually holds the book together. Instead, you feel like you’re reading a recipe book: do this, avoid that, make sure to do this.
There are books that I read years ago in which I can still remember the main ideas. How is that possible? It’s easy to remember powerful stories and illustrations. This is the central sin of Get Abstract. Because there’s no stories or illustrations, you’re not really let with much to remember each summary by. Which, by the way, I think is a powerful lesson for most of us to remember–people aren’t going to remember a bunch of bullet point–they’ll remember the main idea and the stories.
I ultimately ended up getting a refund. The service seems like a good idea, but it definitely didn’t work for me. I’d rather (**gasp**) read the whole book and be able to speak more-or-less intelligently on it, than to say that I’ve read the book, but not be able to remember one thing about it.
What about you? Have you ever given one of these services a while? Would you?
[Image by Ben Oh]
Dear Mr. Ortiz,
Many thanks for your analysis of getAbstract’s service. We always appreciate feedback in helping us to improve. Thanks especially for pointing out the things you like about our service – the 30-day money-back guarantee, the depth of our library, and so on. It gives all our employees a boost when we hear that customers enjoy aspects of our service.
Obviously, we are disappointed that you didn’t find our content memorable. In fact, you have correctly identified one of the more difficult aspects of our writers’ and editors’ jobs: compressing thousands of words into a short five-page summary while making it a fun read. Finding the right balance is a challenge, and every book is different: While some books are filled with real-life stories, others are technical formulations from start to finish. I’m sure you can see our predicament.
However, the vast majority of our audience finds that we strike the right balance. Since our target market is made up of CEOs, senior executives and managers, our main aim is to break down books into their core components in such a way that our audience members can easily apply the strategies to their own firms and improve their businesses. While readers do enjoy anecdotes, and we do try to include them, stories are not the most applicable information for executives who want to adopt the strategies in a book. For information to be practical to our customers, we need to explain its application. Often a two-paragraph capsule of a concept or even a bulleted list is the best – and preferred – way to achieve this; while we strive to make it memorable, even more, it must be practical for most of our readers.
We appreciate you taking the time to put your critique together. Your ideas are on the agenda for our next editorial meeting. As a thank you, we would like you to see out your six-month subscription – free of charge – if only because we’d welcome your feedback in the future. If you are interested, please send your email address to deirdre.cody@getabstract.com, and I will activate an account for you.
Kind regards,
Deirdre Cody (editor at getAbstract)
Rodlie,
I’m fortunate to work for a company that has a corporate account with getAbstract, so it doesn’t cost me anything.
I enjoy reading books as well, and while the service getAbstract provides definitely saves time and is convenient, I personally get more enjoyment reading the actual book.
That would certainly be nice: to get it for free. Like you say, it’s tough to beat an actual book.
Well, I used to subscribe to a competitor of Getabstract before I joined my present company, which gives me the getabstract subscription for free. I would credit those bullet-point summaries with greatly expanding my thinking in a matter of a couple of years. They may not work for everyone, sure, but they did seem to work awefully well for me. If my next company doesn’t offer me a free subscription to Getabstract or one of the others in the business, I’m quite positive to get one myself.
Rodlie,
It’s always helpful to have an objective third party check out your product. I would invite you to try out Soundview Executive Book Summaries before you write off book summaries entirely. We have been summarizing the top business books since 1978 and have this process perfected. Unlike the thin summaries of our competitor, you’ll get 8 full pages of content with our summaries and we include some of the stories and illustrations that, as you indicated, help with understanding and comprehension.
Drop me an email and I’ll sign you up for a trial subscription for comparison’s sake. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Well, I’d say it really depends on what you use the summaries for. I don’t really expect to enjoy any good book just by reading its summary – it’s impossible even if the authors are experienced summary makers.
However, I can see two very good uses of these
One – for people wanting to learn and not knowing where to start first. This may help them decide which books to buy and which are not really for them, based on what’s in it. Reviews usually don’t cover that part consistently.
Two – later to help refresh one’s memory on what one has read before (without having to read it all over again).
I think it’s all about time. Target audience are people who are trying to save it.
I think I would fall under the second example. It would be great to have it as a refresh!
I’ve read about 12 GetAbstract summaries that I found on the Economist website and now I’m trying to convince my office to get me a subscription. I love them but my attitude is a little different from yours. These are books I’m never going to read. First, I don’t have time. Second, I tire of these books if I have to read the whole thing because often these authors seem to think they have to write 300-500 pages to say what could have been said in 100 pages. If I do find a summary of a book that I’d like to know more about, I plan to read the book… but this hasn’t happened so far.
You’re making me think, Ash.
Good call Ash, I think you can either save a lot of time by reading summaries instead of entire books OR you can potentially find a book worth reading that you may not have identified by reading summaries.
I agree with those who think it might be useful. Nobody has the time to read many books now. You can read the most important ones fully and then read the abstract of the other ones. Maybe reading the abstracts you discover one wonderful book that you will read complete.
Regards.
Hi Ivan. I actually hadn’t thought about it from that perspective. Using an Abstract to see if a book might be worth reading. I like that idea!
I like the “summary as a refresher”. I do find that I connect with the original stories but having the bullet points listed in brief really does help.
(Also as a wanna-be author, it’s very interesting to see how this works).
Rodlie, what did you do in the end? Did you resubscribe (or try the alternative offering)?
Hey Alastair: Yeah, I think you’re right. The best is a “summary as a refresher.” That would certainly be of value to me. If I had a budget for it, I’d probably have both. 😉 Although I will add that that’s why blogging is so valuable to me. I try to write a book review from a book I read that helps me to remember it, but also serves as a self-refresher for me if I have to refer back to it.
Right now I’m not using any summary book service.
I think it will suit with me.
Before to buy a book, i would like to have a summary about that book.
There is no time to read the whole book, specially if they are business book, unless they are a great book.
Go for it!
I had subscribed to Get Abstract in the past and must say I did enjoy it. The summaries are a bit skinnier than some of the competitors but I liked them as they have a number of books available and I did not have much time to spend. One issue that I did have was that once you download a summary you cannot access the summary in any other format after your subscription is completed. I think once you have downloaded a summary you should be able to access it in other formats even after the subscription is over.
Glad you liked it!
Thanks for this review on the book summary program that you have tried. I very much agree with you in principal and absolutely understand what you are saying. I don’t think book summaries should be substitutes for books, and I don’t think they are for everyone. I would probably feel the exact same way if I were you. I think some of the commenters make some good points too, and can see how it MAY have value for them, while it simultaneously is not for everyone. I think this page does a good job of offering points and counterpoints if you include the comments.
With that being said, I think there are still a number of other good reasons why some individuals may value summaries. One good reason is for the deep thought reader. If you take what you read and set the book down and think about how it applies to you, think about alternative uses, think about cases that it is true, and cases that it may not be true it will normally take an incredibly long time to read an entire book and ultimately, you won’t be using your time very well. A deep thought reader remembers what they read through association. They associate what they read with how it might apply in their own lives, or how they may attempt to apply it until the idea “becomes their own”. Maybe they don’t remember to the same extent of colorful, vivid, emotional stories, but in terms of value per word read or minute spent, I’m sure you would agree there could be value there… But only for the right person.
Another good reason might be volume and alternative perspectives. If someone is to dive head first into a specific subject for the first time… First of all, they would lack the knowledge and experience in that topic to know what information is credible, and what to rule out. By reading multiple summaries and by focusing on summaries of books by those who have lived it and are not just speaking “in theory”, you will begin to notice commonalities between the summaries and through repetition not only learn, but learn the most commonly reinforced concepts the most that have worked in the past… While also (as Ivan pointed out) determining which books have value reading the entire thing. You will be able to dive into far more books than just the top best sellers that became more well known through good marketing and good titles (as Ash alluded to: reading book summaries of books you wouldn’t normally consider reading)
Another good reason is to save time avoiding some books altogether. If more than 10% of the books you read aren’t really worth your time, and the average summary is 1/10th as long, there could be some value I reading up to 10 summaries instead of that 10th book and it would take the same amount of time or less than the book, and you could still go back and read 9 out of the 10 books from front to cover. Of course, there also would need to be enough additional value in time and emotional energy/frustration saved to pay for the cost of the subscription OR you would have to read enough where the cost you save on that 10% of books or more that you don’t buy make up for those that do. This will certainly not be the case for everyone, but for some. Even for those, there are free reviews available, but it takes time to search, and the quality of random search engine results is not reliable so you’d have to weigh the alternatives and see if it is right for you.
The main thing that is tempting to me personally to pay for a subscription to a summary service is the audio learning. I will sleep on the decision as I still have audio content to get through and books on my list to read that I know I will want to read front to back. But I find it much easier to find time to put on an mp3player and listen while driving, or cooking, or cleaning, or exercising, or letting dogs out, or even when playing a video game when I am too tired to read, but not ready to go to bed.
The time I actually spend visually reading a physical book is precious. Thus, anything that might help me more efficiently select the right books to read while over time reinforcing the important ideas is going to have at least some value to me. For me personally, before I do; it may make sense to get through the material I plan on reading and listening to first, before considering a subscription. However, it may be better setting those aside, or reading those on a limited basis while viewing summaries more actively in the meantime. But I think your title is right, it certainly MAY not be best for everyone, and I can certainly respect that, and think everyone needs to do their due diligence and decide if it is right for them and appreciate your perspective.
What works best for me is to:
– read a book
– go through my highlights and prepare my own summary
When I used getabstract I felt like those bullet points are not mine, I like my own highlights not someone’s else.