Word count

For several years now, I’ve capped the upper limit on Clarkesworld’s original fiction at 8000 words. There were several good reasons for doing that, but they were mostly financial.

This past week, we passed our latest Patreon goal and secured funding for a fourth original story in every issue. Add in the translations that will be in every issue and that’s five originals, two reprints. Assuming the Patreon pledge levels hold, this puts us in a situation that provides me with some flexibility.

I’m considering raising our upper limit to 16000 words. That would take us firmly into novelette territory. (Right now, we barely scrape it.) Each issue would feature no more than one novelette. In the issues we feature a novelette, it would absorb two story slots and leave the issue with four originals, two reprints. Given how few we’d be able to publish, they’d be harder sells, but it does give us (and authors) more flexibility. We would also accompany this change with an increase in pay rate on the 4000+ side of our scale.

I’ve already talked this over with Sean and Kate. Any readers or authors have some thoughts they’d like to share?