By Pat Gulley
With the success of all things ‘e’ in publishing doing so
well, much has been written about the shorter novel. So, I thought I’d write a
bit about old and older norms that are new again.
Seems the
100,000 word, over 300 page book is falling by the wayside, debunking the
general assumption of big publishers that one size fits all. Younger readers,
and a lot of older ones with eReader are much happier with less. Short stories
are a bit longer, but books are getting shorter, leading to popularity of the
novella.
Does this
mean that the American reader’s attention span is shrinking? Some may say so as
they deplore anything changing, but I’m not inclined to believe it. Mostly, I
believe that we are all looking for a well told story and an interesting
to-the-point article and we do not want a bunch of extraneous words because the
publisher demands a certain word count.
Shorter
should not mean less information, but making words count and have a broader
meaning. It provides writers with a flexibility not seen in some time. Like
around the time of the Gutenberg Printing Press, well no, just teasing about
that. Another format that hasn’t been seen for a long time is Pamphleteering
(almost a century) and quite a few writers are returning to it for ePub.
Granted
some publishers have always preferred the 200 to 250 page novel, while others
favored just over 300 pages. They all tend to be in a specific genre, while
literary writers and publishers are appalled that you can’t write 50 pages on
the beauty of your feet touching the gorgeous patina of wood while descending a
5-step staircase.
I’m not
going to ask you to make a choice, just comment on what is being expected from
you as a writer by your agents, editors or fans.
I’m away today, will be home Monday and will look in then,
but Cindy is minding the posts today.
