#1 is a great point and a great recommend. There is certainly a place for long, ponderous reference book-like tomes, but they are a poor substitute for concise beginner books. Eloquent JavaScript is amazing in that respect.
I think the right approach would be to print the concise beginner book and bind it with 1000 blank pages. That way it won't be too daunting for the learner, but can still perform well in a secondary role as a monitor stand once they're done with it.
More seriously, I think that the discipline of making a shorter book usually produces better writing. If you're going to write something longer than say 300 pages (about 1 K&R-length) you'd better have a lot of interesting things to say.
I agree ('the internet' thinks this idea is from Pascal: "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.")
Problem is that that short book, having taken more effort to write, would have to be more expensive (paper, printing, distribution, etc. cost 'nothing' for any book worth anything at all). Selling a shorter book for more money is possible, but customers typically prefer the longer book ("more is better, and even if it is not, I just don't read the extra stuff")
