Ebooks and the triumphant resurgence of the novella…

One of the trends I'm noticing as I buy new ebooks is the lengths, and most of my recent purchases have been novellas from both indie and pro market writers. This makes me realize that there's a side of this self-publishing story that isn't being talked about: the return of the novella market.

Mainstream publishing has all but abandoned the novella, and even among mid-size and small publishers, it's hard to find a novella a good home. Many places choose to double up authors to make a larger print book, and while this works, it has problems, in my opinion. For one thing, some readers will decide not to buy the book if they like one book blurb, but not the other. The other is, it's hard to figure out how to sell them. Do you pair up two stories that are similar and risk making the second novella look like a clone? Or do you pair contrasting stories, even if it might cost you some readers? (For the reason given above that readers like one, but not the other.)

Traditional publishers have tended to look down on the novella because the length to payout ratio isn't "cost effective." I put that in quotes because this is the same industry that banks lousy books using their blockbusters, and that has been operating on a shotgun marketing approach to sell a book within a very limited window of time. They abandon many works even as those books are just starting to find an audience. And they've operated this way for decades knowing this approach meant marginal returns, at best. You pro publishing proponents may try to claim that I'm  wrong, but let's look at Borders, or B. Dalton, or at the diminishing sales of print books while ebook markets are soaring. The fact is, these people don't have room to talk about what's cost effective when so many industry standard practices aren't.

[image error]Ebooks really are changing everything about the market, and yet, most publishers are still putting out word count minimums that completely snub the novella. So a whole lot of writers who are really good have nowhere to go. And the industry response is mostly, "So write something we want to sell or stop whining." Is it any wonder that so many novella writers have chosen to go with self-publishing in an environment this rigidly opposed to their preferred format?

The market for these novellas is bigger than publishers want to admit, and it's only going to grow larger as more writers return to the shorter formats. With the freedom to let the story decide its own length, I think we'll see a lot more novellas in the coming years, and not just from amateurs and indies, but from novel writing pros who are exploring the format and discovering its merits. Novellas are faster in pace than novels, but more detailed than short stories. And for a lot of writers, I think they'll find it's the "sweet spot" where they want to put the bulk of their creative experimentation.

I love writing novellas, though I also love wiring novels. I've never cared for short fiction and feel it's too limiting. But that's just my opinion, and not a proclamation that the short  story market is doomed. (I'd be talking out of my ass if I said that.)

I've seen writers I respect bash the trend of online writers skipping pro markets altogether. "Those dumb noobs just aren't trying hard enough," they say. But if a writer only writes novellas, there's no huge market to work with, and there's certainly no huge paycheck to be gained out of submitting to a small press. What benefit is there to be gained in submission except bragging rights? And really, if that's all the pro market has to offer is a bit of ammo for a dick waving contest, I'm not interested. Hell, I don't even have a dick to wave anymore.

Even with stories going online and dumping print costs altogether, the novella still doesn't have a commercial appeal to most publishers. It's not a matter of try or try not, as Yoda would say. It's a matter of looking at reality and realizing you're better off selling that novella directly to readers. You keep more of the profits for yourself, and you don't have to deal with a finicky market that only wants "sure-fire" hits.

Lots of pro writers have said, "This is a business, not an art." I think you've lost the point of writing if you believe that. This is art. It's pop art, but it's always an ongoing experiment, and sometimes experiments fail. The pro market is so afraid of failure that they won't take risks anymore. They take safe bets, and in the process, they kill the art side of the business. The artistic aspects of writing were being micromanaged to death, and the novella was one of the casualties of the mindset.  But now the novella is coming back, even if the pro markets are still ignoring the format.

I want to address a tangent before I close this out. Again, I've seen writers I respect complain about having to compete with rank amateurs on the market. They claim that the crappy writers charge sub-par prices and make it harder for them to sell "real" writing. With all due respect, grow up and stop whining. The whole last decade, amateur and indie writers have been talking about the Internet as a level playing field where everyone competes on the merits of skill, not on who you know. And pro writers rolled their eyes and wrote whole tomes on why the amateurs were wrong.

Here we are a decade later, and now the mid-list and best-selling writers are entering the market with self-published works. Which means they're entering a market that has been dominated and saturated by indies and amateurs. It's not their fault that the pro writers snubbed the online markets. Pros are coming into the game late and whining that it's not fair that the markets are overloaded with allegedly unworthy books. Bullshit. Nothing could be more fair than you having to grow a new online market and compete with the same writers you scoffed at for their sub-par work. Yes, they're amateurs. They never tried to claim otherwise. All they said was, "One day, the pro print model is going to collapse under its own weight." You said they were misguided. And now many of you are coming to realize they weren't. Instead of sucking it up and admitting you were wrong, now you complain that you have to enter "a market of losers."

If you would stop complaining and get to work, your skill as a writer would shine through and the readers will come to you. Just like you always said, "The money comes to the writer." It's just, in this new world, it comes to you direct from the readers instead of through a middle man. It's truly a level playing field now, and the little guy has just as much chance as you do. And yes, having so many more writers out there means you have to work harder to be heard over the chatter. But that's been true in the pro markets for years, where every month, thousands of new books get dumped on the shelves.

The effect is multiplied exponentially when you get on the ebook markets and have to compete with all the self-publishers, but by complaining that it isn't fair, your reputation as a "pro" is going to take some dings. You don't have a case here. You were wrong about where the market was going, and the self-publishers were right. So at this point, you can either shut up and put up, or you can fade into obscurity, another dinosaur who failed to adapt to changing conditions.