Book length - Where is it heading?

[EricWard]

I've heard some anecdotal evidence on both sides of the fence. One side says that people want more bang for their buck - longer books. But, in the age of instant gratification, ereaders, and microtransactions, the other side (designer types, mostly) argues that shorter books (< 40K) are going to be in vogue.

I'd be interested in hearing some opinions on where book length will trend towards in, say, ten years (in our respective fields of sf and fantasy, of course).

 

[Scott R. Forshaw]

Personally, I don't think either one will ever completely force the other into extinction. There will always be those who prefer shorter literature, and vice versa. I, for one, would hate to only have a choice of something that amounted to less than 40k words. It would leave me feeling immensely unfulfilled.

Also, surely it would be to the detriment of society, and to the intellect of our youth, should longer literature be eradicated from existence.

If it were to ever happen, I'd certainly be at the front of the rebellious mob to overthrow such idiocracy. I'd make placards and everything!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Right now, it looks like books are going to be bigger and bigger, but it may take only one short book that is a huge, huge success to reverse the trend, and it's impossible to predict if/when such a book might appear.

Whether it does or not, I don't see either long books or short books disappearing entirely.

 

[Warren_Paul]

I can understand the <40k book idea. We all watch TV shows that come out one episode a week for 12 or so weeks, some longer depending on the story/funding. This would be much the same. So, yeah, I could picture a short episodic novel being released like say once a month that eventually built up to a whole story by the end of the year. Not a terrible idea, but I think I'd still prefer to get one big book a year instead.

 

[EricWard]

Hmm, looking back, I was a little unclear in that phrasing. I didn't quite mean that one book length would completely eliminate the other. More like one would gain preference.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

My thought is that we are in the age of the digital book. There are no real constraints upon authors to try and write a book that will fit into a standard paperback etc. So my thought is that we'll see both more exceptionally long books, and exceptionally short ones.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[EricWard]

My thought is that we are in the age of the digital book. There are no real constraints upon authors to try and write a book that will fit into a standard paperback etc. So my thought is that we'll see both more exceptionally long books, and exceptionally short ones.

That is an awesome point! I didn't even think in terms of physical printing constraints. I was immediately jumping to audience demand.

 

[Lucky_Lola]

I've always been a fan of getting lost in a thick tome (to the point that I used to shop for handbags based on whether or not I could fit my copy of The Once and Future King in them). Not to say that I don't read or even buy shorter novels - I have most of Fiest's later books on my shelves. However, I do get a little sad when I can sit down and devour a novel in an afternoon, especially when the bookshops still rip me NZ$25+ for it in paperback.

I think psychotick has a really good point about digital. I'm also inclined to agree with Teresa in that it will only take one really good book of the long or short camp to change the average length of the books on bestsellers lists. At the end of the day though, in our genres, dedicated readers will always just read what they like. Length won't matter if the writer is good.

 

[Abernovo]

According to SFWA, novel length is from 40,000 words upwards. 17,500 to 40,000 is a novella. Personally, I quite like novellas, but the 'accepted wisdom' is that they don't sell, partly due to production costs being similar to full length novels, without the thickness. You do get novellas in collections, though - Jim Butcher's Side Jobs, for instance, has a novella along with short stories and (I think) a novelette (7,500 - 17,500).

On the other hand, I've seen an apparent rise in chapbooks in recent years, but they're mainly from small, independent presses and are rarely intended to be commercial. They're much smaller, though: a novelette at most, in length.

 

[Lucky_Lola]

I own a few novellas/novelettes, but they're all from my uni days, particularly books like The Fatal Eggs, Black Snow and Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov (who was the subject of my Honours dissertation). Definitely not new stories...

But as you say, Aber, the independents (or in my case, the academic presses) are really all you see putting out these little works.

 

[Abernovo]

You like Bulgakov!

 

[Montero]

Drifting slightly sideways on the topic - with digital publishing it is nice that you can get short stories/novellettes/novellas on an existing series that you are following. With paper books there is a tendency for a collection to come out, which may well include already published stories, which if you've already read them it feels expensive to be buying a whole book of which you want to read only half.

Paper books - even more off topic - I know the technology isn't quite here yet but I'd like to see a print on demand type of service where you get to pick and chose which novellas and short stories go into the collection you are buying. So if you already have two of the short stories by an author you can leave them out. (Given POD still has a big type-setting phase for the author/editor the pick and mix idea of publishing wouldn't be easy at present.)

But overall, yes, I hope that with digital shaking things up there will be less rigidity on ideal book lengths. (Book length is also driven by physical shelf space by the way.)

 

[Dozmonic]

Everything is cyclical. Shorter books have been the vogue in the past, even in genres that are filled with lengthy works now. There will always be a place for both, but I do think we shall see shorter books again due to the digital medium as folks have said.

Michael Moorcock's how to write a book in 3 days was basically a guide to doing 20k words a day. He was doing it for fantasy works (swords and sorcery rather than epic), but 60k was well accepted. Now you're looking at 100k for any type of fantasy that's new. Some ideas and some author styles work far better in a shorter story. Some really excel in the longer books. It'll be good to have more of a balance again.

 

[James Coote]

I wonder if there will be more serialized novels distributed via websites and apps, similar to how web comics have grown up and evolved. (Though, blogs would apparently be a near ideal platform for this and if they are being used in such a way, I'm critically underaware of examples)

 

[simonm]

Wrote to DAW a couple of years ago about book length. They wanted over 80,000 but didn't care much about the maximum length.