The Little Book that Could
Do any of these books ring a bell?
Slaughterhouse-Five, Fahrenheit 451, The Great Gatsby, Old Man and the Sea, Bridges of Madison County, Postman Always Rings Twice, Call of the Wild, The Time Machine, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde…
All of these books have one thing in common—brevity, with word counts under 50,000. After finishing my latest novella, The Plug Nickel Cafe (38,081 words), I began to wonder more and more why novels are so long now. I’m not sure if many of the books mentioned above would even get published today. Is it a matter of taste, or purely economical? Mark Coker of Smashwords has said that readers prefer longer novels, but I’m not sure if that’s totally accurate. I, as a reader, want more than anything else: value for my money. Paying twelve or fifteen bucks for an eBook that I can’t physically put on the shelf seems a little high, especially if I’m going to finish the novel in one or two sittings. Therefore, if I’m going to spend that much, I guess I would prefer the book to be a little longer, just as long as the writing and the story was good. Many of the books today, though, seem a little too long, like many of the films coming out of Hollywood that don’t know when to end. I can understand a multi-generational saga going on for hundreds and hundreds of pages, something like James A. Michener used to write, but a taut thriller? So many of today’s books are filled with endless description and back story, which has very little to do with propelling the plot forward (as a writer, I tend to give the reader just enough of both so they can fill in the blanks). Sometimes I think it’s just filler to make the novels longer, because from what I understand many publishers today don’t want manuscripts that are under a 100,000 words. I can understand the reasoning behind this—because it costs just as much to market a novella (50,000 words or less) as one that is much longer in length; only they can’t charge near as much for it. This is pure economics, I get that, but it doesn’t necessarily leave the purchaser with a better reading experience.
Now, though, Amazon.com has come out with Kindle Singles, a program that lets authors publish shorter forms of fiction and non-fiction. Length of the work is typically between 5,000 and 30,000 words, and must be priced between .99 and 4.99. This is a boon, not only for writers, but readers as well, that don’t necessarily want to slog through a long novel or piece of journalism. Back in the day, short stories used to be quite popular, but now they’re hard to find anywhere. Writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald could make quite a comfortable living selling their shorter works to magazines such as Collier’s. Today this is not the case.
I guess the point I’m really trying to make here is: longer isn’t always better (please, no jokes), and sometimes it’s best to leave the reader wanting more. If by chance you’re an author and a fan praises one of your works, but says it could have been a little longer. Just smile and say, “Thanks.”
Slaughterhouse-Five, Fahrenheit 451, The Great Gatsby, Old Man and the Sea, Bridges of Madison County, Postman Always Rings Twice, Call of the Wild, The Time Machine, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde…
All of these books have one thing in common—brevity, with word counts under 50,000. After finishing my latest novella, The Plug Nickel Cafe (38,081 words), I began to wonder more and more why novels are so long now. I’m not sure if many of the books mentioned above would even get published today. Is it a matter of taste, or purely economical? Mark Coker of Smashwords has said that readers prefer longer novels, but I’m not sure if that’s totally accurate. I, as a reader, want more than anything else: value for my money. Paying twelve or fifteen bucks for an eBook that I can’t physically put on the shelf seems a little high, especially if I’m going to finish the novel in one or two sittings. Therefore, if I’m going to spend that much, I guess I would prefer the book to be a little longer, just as long as the writing and the story was good. Many of the books today, though, seem a little too long, like many of the films coming out of Hollywood that don’t know when to end. I can understand a multi-generational saga going on for hundreds and hundreds of pages, something like James A. Michener used to write, but a taut thriller? So many of today’s books are filled with endless description and back story, which has very little to do with propelling the plot forward (as a writer, I tend to give the reader just enough of both so they can fill in the blanks). Sometimes I think it’s just filler to make the novels longer, because from what I understand many publishers today don’t want manuscripts that are under a 100,000 words. I can understand the reasoning behind this—because it costs just as much to market a novella (50,000 words or less) as one that is much longer in length; only they can’t charge near as much for it. This is pure economics, I get that, but it doesn’t necessarily leave the purchaser with a better reading experience.
Now, though, Amazon.com has come out with Kindle Singles, a program that lets authors publish shorter forms of fiction and non-fiction. Length of the work is typically between 5,000 and 30,000 words, and must be priced between .99 and 4.99. This is a boon, not only for writers, but readers as well, that don’t necessarily want to slog through a long novel or piece of journalism. Back in the day, short stories used to be quite popular, but now they’re hard to find anywhere. Writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald could make quite a comfortable living selling their shorter works to magazines such as Collier’s. Today this is not the case.
I guess the point I’m really trying to make here is: longer isn’t always better (please, no jokes), and sometimes it’s best to leave the reader wanting more. If by chance you’re an author and a fan praises one of your works, but says it could have been a little longer. Just smile and say, “Thanks.”
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