Best sellers are getting shorter

[Stephen Palmer]

I wouldn't want to put words in your mouth, @Stephen Palmer, about how you should feel cutting your work down to suit an ever-shrinking attention span / ever-tighter bottom line. So how do you feel?

To be absolutely honest, it doesn't much bother me. With very few exceptions I know the word count of my books before I begin writing. That's either a marketing or a logistical decision, depending on circumstances. 85k-90k with chapters around 4k is a nice format to write to!

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Any particular reason for this decision and this particular word count? At what point do you focus on the word count? Before you start? In a later editing phase?

I'm asking because when I start writing, I have no idea how long the finished story will be and my attempts at an editing pass always seem to make the story longer,

See my reply above, but...
I'm very much a planner, but within my format, especially during the final third of a novel, I'm more of a pantser. I write to deadlines and word counts because that's what authors do. I'm quite liking the idea of reduced word counts though, as that will make me focus even more on quality storytelling. Some of my early novels did have a bit of flab...

 

[Parson]

I don't know that this is relevant, but I've noticed that when I read a book on my Kindle I'm almost always totally unaware of how long the book is. I do remember a time when I was buying paperbacks that I'd gravitate toward larger books because "I'm getting more for my money." --- Not logical, I know, but there was a time I did think like that.

 

[ColGray]

I'm deeply suspicious of this data for a few reasons:
1) NYT best seller list has an overabundance of ghost-written famous person memoirs. They're short. They sell quickly then fall off quickly -- everyone who wants to read Rob Lowe's memoir probably gets it early! And they've become more and more prevalent over the last decade.
2) Books by politicians fall into the same category (short, sell well, quality of content is largely irrelevant) and have also increased in prevalence.
3) A number of the major SF/F debuts and list leaders in the last 5-10 years have been massive -- Ruouchi's Sun Eater, Jemisin's Broken Earth, The Expanse, Name of the Wind, etc.
4) Tell me about median, not just avg, and I'd be interested in total sales over a set period (n years) vs how long were they on the best seller list. Show me the difference between, It sells well, vs, a MEGA hit and what's the length?