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Novels and Novellas and Tomes, Oh My!
- bambax 5y agoGreat read. As a European, one always wonders why American fiction is so looong, and this provides a plausible explanation (it's the supermarkets!) > As writers, we can choose to devote times to projects that seem more likely to be published or bring in income. I think the new thing with "amateurs" self-publishing ebooks is that 1/ they don't expect to derive any significant income from it, and 2/ they are free to set their own prices. This frees them from economic constraints (and associated length requirements).
- DyslexicAtheist 5y agoagreed, but it's not just in fiction IMO. problem extends to many other genres, and even media outside of print such as videos. one could also make a similar point for podcasts which don't have to play by any of the rules in this article but still are mostly drivel with a low content/noise ratio.
- cafard 5y agoLooong as compared to Buddenbrooks? Knausgard's work?
- robin_reala 5y agoFor Standard Ebooks, our default approach is that a short story is up to 20k words, a novella between 20k and 40k, and a novel is greater than 40k. Short stories and novellas get combined into a comprehensive (or occasionally themed) short fiction compilation, assuming there’s enough of them.
- allturtles 5y agoI don't find the sales channel forces described here super convincing as as an explanation for change in novel length. I find it especially hard to believe that grocery stores were ever a major economic driver for 'fat fantasy' sales, but maybe I'm wrong, and I'm just a bookstore snob. It would be interesting to see some hard data on word counts over time, broken down by genre.