SciFi and Fantasy eBook Club discussion

I have been struggling with the length of books lately. It seems more and more authors are publishing books of 300 pages or so, that I can read in about 3 hours. I know that publishers want books of a specific length to reduce their cost exposure, but is this trend good or bad?

I find I like a longer book, assuming it's not just long to be long... It still needs all the elements of a good story, good character development, lots of action, twists, turns, etc. I just don't want to finish a new book in a short half-afternoon of reading...

Thoughts?

300 pages is about 75,000 words. (If you read that in 3 hours, you're reading at about 417 words/min, which is 117 words higher than the average adult reader, but 33 words slower than the average college reader...he, he.)

That's actually pretty average for mass market genre novels in mystery, westerns, science fiction, romance and mainstream fiction.

The actual trend I see, especially in fantasy, is rather the opposite: books in excess of 120,000 words per books (making series cumulatively really huge).

What size is really correct? Are shorter or longer books good of bad?

The answer in both cases is this: It doesn't matter. The story should never fit the size; the size should fit the story.

To support my position, take for instance the list of notable examples of novellas on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novella#...

The Call of the Wild
Of Mice and Men
Animal Farm
A Clockwork Orange
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The Old Man and the Sea
A Christmas Carol
The Time Machine
Heart of Darkness...

Many, many great works were of shorter lenghths because the stories fit that form.

My favorite author of all time is Philip K. Dick. Every single book he ever wrote fits into the shorter side of the equation. But there are also long works that I've loved, Dune, Lord of the Rings, Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained...etc.

It's all a matter of how much story there is.

And as a counter example I always point to Tad Williams's series Otherland. It's huge. Every book in the series is huge. But the story, IMHO, just didn't fit that size. It should have still been a two or three book series of considerable size, but I felt it was padded out with way too much extraneous material.

Many of its virtual worlds, which the reader is tediously drawn through, unnecessarily--retelling stories from Alice in Wonderland to The Iliad--stretch on for page after page without appreciably advancing the plot.

In the end, I was left with an incredible desire to like the books, and a store of visually exciting memories...but the actual reading of the books became a monstrous chore. A slog. Unpleasant and irritating. Mostly irritating because had it been trimmed down by a third, it would have been amazing.

I'm sure stories can err on the "too short" side, too, but I can't think of any examples at the moment.

A work should be as long as it needs to be, and not one word longer. It is an artistic judgment.
Market considerations are properly left to the publishing house.
From the consumer point of view, this is like asking whether you should buy shorts, capris, or long trousers. Well, what do you want? These days all lengths are easily available to you. Today you want short, a few tapas to tease the palate. Tomorrow you are ready for the turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Perfectly OK.

Brenda wrote: "From the consumer point of view, this is like asking whether you should buy shorts, capris, or long trousers..."

How long should a piece of string be?

I agree with Brenda to a degree. Some novellas are perfect at their exact size; likewise, some tomes are perfect at that size as well. Unfortunately, some authors don't have to skill to tell the difference. I've read some novellas that felt rushed and could have done well with more flesh added onto the existing bones. I've also read many many doorstop sized novels that could use a serious paring down.

I know that much of this sizing is a marketing decision by publishing houses based on what the customer base has been trained to expect. But, that's far from the only reason.

I got very bored very fast with Otherland. My reasons were the same as Micah listed.

How long should a piece of string be?

How long should a piece for strings be? :)

I don't think length determines quality, but it certainly demands it.

I suspect some writers have a 'natural length'

It was probably something they've grown used to when they wrote their first books and they now tend to stick at about that.

[Insert size joke here]

Part of length is the style of the time the book was written in. For now, it seems, lush description and detail is mostly verboten - this can sometimes become "too much too quickly" type of book. It can clock in at under 400 pages, but it could have been 600 or 800 pages fully flushed out. Of course, some readers like the lickety-splitness, and detest anything that smacks of slowness.

As an author, I like my books to be a minimum of 100,000 words up to around 120,000 in my longer ones. My Brooklyn Shadows series is 75,000 to 85,000 for the two books so far, and I consider that to be the absolute minimum for me. As a reader, I feel cheated with anything less than around 325 pages. I don't mind epic books as long as the content is necessary and truly drives the story and is not simply padding.

Just reading Rob Roy
You have to read about 100 pages before the story starts to speed up a bit!

Now that is a function of the period in which the work was written. It is a rare novel of the 1800s that starts with a bang. In LES MISERABLES it's like a hundred pages before we even meet Jean Valjean.

I wonder what readers will say in 100 years about the writing styles of today? Or the length of our books?

It'll probably depend on the standard of literary,they might be regarded as a bit long, or they might be considered too short and infantile for adult reading :-)

I look at the skinny little paperbacks I used to purchase back in the '60s and early '70s when I first started to read SF and fantasy, and they seem so short now. Its not unusually to see classic books from that time reprinted with two or even three books now contained in one volume.

Really, I don't think I've ever read a *good* book that I thought was too long. The current "standard" of 300-400 pages take me a day or two to read (depending on what else I might have to do). If I read a book of less than 300 pages these days, I feel almost cheated. This may explain the explosion of popularity in series, as the "story" can then expand to thousands of pages without seeming to be too large.

Michael wrote: "Really, I don't think I've ever read a *good* book that I thought was too long..."

Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy. ];D

It was seriously too long and very much padded to the hilt with extraneous material. Good book, though, despite the extra stuffing.

But turning that around I know I've never read a good short book and thought "that's too short."

I feel more cheated by getting a huge long book and finding out most of it is unnecessary to the plot.

My understanding is readers today have shorter attention spans due to cell phone experience. I've read readers want shorter books today as a result.I know one editing book said to edit for more white on the page to move the readers along faster!

Fantasy is entertainment and readers look for slightly longer books. I had to divide my first book into three, 400~ page books (100K-120K words) to be able to publish and sell them. IMHO, reading a good book too fast loses a lot of subtlety and depth.

@C.,

I must not be in tune with the current trends or maybe my attention span hasn't suffered from the influx of cell phones, but I love long dense pages and sentences that seem to never end with scant paragraph breaks; a common complaint about a lot of contemporary writing is that too much happens too quickly.

There is a time and place for the quick style, now and then, but it's sometimes good to slow down. I've said this before, but imagine finding a time machine, going back to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, then running through while trying to beat your best 5k record. Something wrong there.

I love the nineteenth century English novels where descriptions are gorgeous etc. but today's readers want things moving faster according to what I read. I don't have a cell phone, so I still have an attention span, LOL. I wrote my books to keep the action well paced and intersperse with slower paced emotional elements to give the readers tension breaks. I wrote what I want to read and hope to find an audience.

I agree with both of you. We're a self selecting group who love reading and therefore do like the descriptive passages, but there are a lot of people out there who need something faster

Well...not totally scientific, but a lot of what I've read is that the average length of books has been trending up for quite some time:

http://bookriot.com/2014/07/22/why-bo...

Usually they compare just the most popular books. It would be interesting to see a real study of specific genres.

I've read quite a few comments in various and sundry places that 'people' want shorter books with less complex plots etc., etc., etc.

But, I'm really curious if there is empirical data to back that up of if that's just come marketing conventional wisdom that someone made up similar to the common knowledge that people don't want TV shows with smart, complex plots .... As avid readers, we don't represent the majority of people who buy books; OTOH, collectively, we do tend to buy the majority of books overall ....

So do authors do better writing towards people who buy 1 book a year or is that reserved for the top 1% of authors with the rest scrambling for that group that buy a book every month or so - and do those people really want a short, quick read or something interesting they can read over time?

I mean I've read three books so far in 2015 that were over 500 pages so I'm possibly not the best person to ask ....

From the writer point of view this is unimportant. The book is as long as it needs to be.

Geoffrey wrote: "I've read quite a few comments in various and sundry places that 'people' want shorter books with less complex plots etc., etc., etc.

But, I'm really curious if there is empirical data to back ..."

Good points. Personally, I wrote my fantasy series as the story I liked and told it the way I'd want it told if I was the average fantasy reader. For me it was about writing what I needed to write. Whether or not it found a reader market was secondary.

That said, it takes an enormous investment of time, money, and research to write and market a book. Once done, it's an unexpected investment one realized should not be wasted. I think at that point, writers realize they can't afford to waste that investment and start writing more to improve the ROI so it becomes an income stream. From that perspective, writing shorter books to market faster improves the 'production line, turn around and thus ROI. So writers write more to produce income in many cases sacrificing the love of the story to economic interests. In some venues, shorter works produce the same monetary return as longer ones so there is an incentive to churn out product.

Then comes the new reality of people with less time to read and smart phones to read on. That would seem to create a market for shorter, less complex works. So maybe both sides are moving towards shorter works in general.

My six book series consists of ~400 page books, so again, I'm writing what I need to write and can only hope there is still a market for them.

Geoffrey wrote: "I've read quite a few comments in various and sundry places that 'people' want shorter books with less complex plots etc., etc., etc.

But, I'm really curious if there is empirical data to back ..."

I really don't know. I've also heard people say that they only read books that come in series.

There does seem to be a trend for shorter sentences and paragraphs and less description/ more action. My 14 year old son certainly seems to have a shorter attention span than I had at his age.

Will wrote: "Geoffrey wrote: "I've read quite a few comments in various and sundry places that 'people' want shorter books with less complex plots etc., etc., etc.

But, I'm really curious if there is empiri..."

I've read that is the case, Will. The trend toward shorter sentences and less description with more action. Readers are used to fast everything in the action movies and games and I guess to succeed, books must follow that trend.

Indeed. It's interesting to compare classic books of only a few decades ago with more modern books. Writing that was praised in the 1960s and earlier would probably be red-penned by editors and publishers today.

When I was in high school (early 80s) an English explained that the average sentence should be twenty words for common usage. Decades later I heard from an adult my age, going back to college, that her teachers were saying twelve words per sentence, but this was being dropped in favor of the ten word average. Too short. Way too short. And I'm not sure who or what is deciding on the proper average word length as the English language doesn't have an equivalent of the academie francaise, but it definitely seems like the English sentence is shrinking.

Along with Mars bars and Cadbury's crème eggs.

Will wrote: "Indeed. It's interesting to compare classic books of only a few decades ago with more modern books. Writing that was praised in the 1960s and earlier would probably be red-penned by editors and pub..."

I remember reading about a guy who decided to try an experiment. He copied the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice, and sent it around to several publishers. All rejected it.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/ju...

Well, take heart, sentences, books, candy aside, at least expenditure on political campaigns are expected to be bigger than ever in the coming years. Aren't we lucky!

Bridgett - I'm on a writer's forum called absolutewrite. Not long ago somebody posted a piece of classic literature (I think by Jane Austen) and then proceeded to "correct" it to modern tastes.

Sometimes you just can't make it up.

I would bet money that there is not an editor in NYC who cannot recognize the first chapter of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. That is an extraordinarily well-known work; you might as well apply as an actor and use Brad Pitt's head shot.
There is also the point that different publishers are looking for different things. It doesn't matter if it's the best book in the world, if it is an adult novel and you send it to a picture-book publisher. They are going to reject it, hello.

Brenda - the article Bridgett linked to suggests that author sent it to general publishers (such as Penguin) who might have taken it. No picture-book publishers, as far as I can tell.

It doesn't surprise me. Writing styles have changed radically since Jane Austen's day. For that matter, I'm not entirely convinced that a famous novel from say fifty to sixty years would succeed now.

I think it's more about the story than the page length. Some short books are just right, others leave me feeling like something is missing. With long books, some are enthralling all the way through, others seem to drag.

That said, I've been loving novellas lately. I just don't have time to read even a 300 page book (despite the fact that I could probably read it in 3 hours too.)

Rinelle wrote: "I think it's more about the story than the page length. Some short books are just right, others leave me feeling like something is missing. With long books, some are enthralling all the way through..."

I read that novellas are the thing now. Not for me, I want something I can get into and come to involve myself in. Short works in general, good ones, get me interested and then they're over. I'd rather a longer book if it's engaging.

Generally I prefer shorter novels, provided that a complete story is told. A lot of times when I've tried books much longer than 400 pages it gets a bit rambly and I lose interest.

There are exceptions. I mean, if you really have enough story to fit 1000 pages, then that's totally fine.

I think the key point is that the page count should serve the story. Books feel long or short not because of how many pages they are, but based on what the story being told requires.

I also agree it is more about the story than page length, but at the same time I think length is important for immersion. If a story is too short I feel 'cast out' of the world too soon and it is disappointing. There has to be a balance between rich content and trimming the fluff :-)

It also makes a difference what device you're reading it on. I could not imagine reading WAR & PEACE on a cell phone, for instance.

I must admit I'd not thought about the platform. As you say, War and Peace on a cell phone is distinctly sub-optimal :-)

I've suggested that if people pay me enough I'll have attractive professionals of the chosen gender come and read the book to them

I've started reading a lot more short fiction recently. When I'm busy and struggling to find much time to read, a short story or novella that I can finish on a single commute or in the bath is just perfect. It's a different form, so the rules & expectations are different, but (I'm learning!) you can have just as satisfying a story in a short format.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I'd argue that a series like A Song of Ice and Fire is actually a single "story" philosophically speaking (the individual books don't have self-contained plot) and I also love epics of that scale!

So I'm going with a total cop-out of "any length, as long as it's done well".

If its good its too short, if its bad its too long...