What is a chapbook?
A chapbook is a small, short booklet of poems or prose, usually twenty to forty pages, made from folded and stitched sheets. It is the oldest cheap format in literature and it survives because the form fits a single, focused body of work.
Where the form comes from
Chapbooks were the cheap street literature of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries: ballads, tales and pamphlets sold by pedlars called chapmen. The name is the trade, not a genre. The modern literary chapbook keeps the cheapness and the brevity and puts serious short-form work inside.
Why the form survives
A full collection asks a reader to live with a body of work. A chapbook asks for an afternoon. That scale suits a single sequence, a tight theme or a first outing, and it lets small presses take risks a full book cannot afford. See the shelf for eight examples.
What goes in one
Poetry most often, but also flash fiction, the lyric essay, and hybrid work. The unifying quality is compression: a chapbook is short because the writing is doing more with less.
How is a chapbook different from a book?
Length and construction. A chapbook is short and stitched; a book is longer and usually perfect bound. See chapbook vs poetry book.
How long is a chapbook?
Usually 20 to 40 pages. See how big a chapbook is.