Shorter novels?

Tinman said:

I've always enjoyed epic novels, ones with a large cast of characters, 150,000 words to 200,000 words long. But I seem to prefer reading shorter novels on e-readers. Aside from the Stephen Kings out there, do you think there is market for longer novels in e-publishing?

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There's a market for stories of all lengths in e-publishing. I'd think longer novels especially, since there's no extra printing cost involved (no printing cost at all, in fact) and the longer novel on an e-reader is just as light to carry around as any other reading material. I read Under The Dome in hardback, and that was a really unwieldy book!

I found that my reading patterns shifted over time. When I first began to read ebooks (on the computer since I don't own an ereader) I found I was using a different attention span than with printed books, but within a few months the new method of reading was just the same.

Not to be smarmy but that's like asking if people who like books like a lot of pages. The only change is the delivery system. The books are still the same, just not on paper. And now with the saturation of Ebooks in the market by well known authors the field is going to continue to grow.

On the flip side I do think that E-readers have opened up the market for shorter stories. A person might not buy a book of short stories for 10$ but they might buy one story for .99 cents. Just look at things like the Kindle Singles.

I don't think this being an ebook really makes a difference for novel length. I think (anecdotal, no data) that epics are less popular today than in the past. People aren't reading (buying) James Michener length novels. I agree with TNTales, the change is only in the delivery mechanism.

I did a quick review of what's in my Kindle library. Skipping the non-fiction, the longest I have is 116,00 words and most are in the 70-85,000 range. But when I look at my physical bookshelf, I have a few old Micheners (Hawaii, Centennial) and a battered Shogun by James Clavell. But I haven't read them in decades and they really should go to GoodWill or a garage sale.

My tastes have changed. I still read series books and trilogies, so maybe that's the option for a longer book. Or write the next "Texas." (Never read that one, wonder if it's on Kindle...)

Jeff

WeaselFire said:

I don't think this being an ebook really makes a difference for novel length.


Jeff

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I think it does, actually. With print books, the publishing houses always seemed to want books of a particular genre to be the same length. So if a book was a mystery for X House, it needed to be between 60K and 80K, say. A manuscript at 50K would have to be fluffed up and one that was 90K needed to be trimmed. It's one thing to expand or abridge a work for reading purposes, to make it a better book. But to do so to make it look more like a bunch of other books, well, that was the way things are done with print. And that's a freeing aspect of ebooks - the book can be as long as it ought to be, in and of itself, rather than so it will look uniform on a shelf.

I do think longer books are still popular - a few years ago, I started noticing paperbacks changing size. The fatter books became taller. To save paper, I guess.

My previous post may have been ambiguous, so to clarify: my preferences didn't change permanently. When I first began reading ebooks I found the medium changed my experience (perhaps my mind was expecting article-sized reading). But after several months, my preferences for book length were the same regardless of medium. I had no trouble reading some 400k+ bookstoppers in ebook format, though I might have found that tiring earlier.

I had to think about this. Reading just paperbacks (I could never afford the hardcover editions), I found my purchasing habits were pretty uniform. This may have been due to the industry expectations that books of X genre or Y category were ### of pages in length in general and simply purchasing what was available in my browsing.

When I discovered Kindle for the PC and reading on my laptop (and my Acer, and now my Nook Tablet), the length of the book was really no longer a concern. It was now more a consideration for the price of an ebook and where it was purchased.

If I get a Kindle version of a book off amazon, if I'm paying publisher prices ($7.99-9.99), then I expect the comparable size of book to go with it. I'm paying that same price as a paperback in the store, I better get the same size/word length.

But with the rise of epublishers who could afford to start putting out shorter ebooks and charging reasonable prices for them, I found myself gravitating to those, too. I really enjoyed having affordable ebooks of varying lengths, as long as the pricing was comparable to the length. I think it really opened up the selection for me and widened my reading experience.

Long way around to say that yes, I think there's still a market out there for epic ebooks and the thing that is still in the forefront of many readers minds is cost. At least for me, the price of the book is going to continue to drive my personal trend in reading.

Society in general seems to have shorter attention spans than in days gone by. The increase in technology and competition for people's time may be contributing to the upswing in interest for shorter books. People are conditioned now to get instant gratification and instant results. Reading through 600 pages to get to the resolution of the story is just more time than many people want to invest these days.

I know my attention span seems to be shrinking. I'm preferring shorter novels (and shorter audio books). I do know of several friends who agree with me in general.

However, my fantasy-reading friends seem to want everything to start at 100,000 words and run for endless sequels. Almost without exception.

To answer your question I find that it hasn't changed my reading preferences except for reading more free public domain titles like Les Miserables and Frankenstein. Also I appreciate having a e-reader for longer titles as I don't have to lug around a door-stopper. The only other way my tastes have changed is that sometimes I don't buy ebooks because they are overpriced (the paper version being significantly cheaper in some cases).

I like good epic length novels because they tend to be complex stories (think a 2hr movie vs 21 min sit com).

I just read the Dome on my PC. I would NEVER have bought the paper book. When it was first released it sounded like an interesting story. During the Walmart price war I looked at it, but just couldn't buy a brick sized book.

With as far as eReaders have progressed, I would never buy any paper based fiction now. I rarely ever re-read a fiction book. So, once read, they're just something that I have to store and dust until I can get rid of it again. (I use technical books over and over and over again and often need/want to flip between pages, so I still prefer some paper based technical books.)

So, I would think eReaders have opened up new sales for epic length books.

From a reader's perspective, I can't see why having a shorter attention span would tilt people's reading habits from say, enjoying 125,000-word novels to 75,000. Even if the book is 50,000 words shorter, they're still probably not going to finish it in one sitting, since their attention spans are so short. And since it's fiction we're talking about, people read it for leisure, so they're not going to be short on time and be pressured to finish under any sort of deadline. Besides, a longer work can sometimes feel shorter, which has more to do with pacing (and perhaps sentence construction?) than actual length. It's all conjecture, but I don't really believe that e-books or shorter attention spans will make avid readers favor shorter novels.

TraciLoudin said:

From a reader's perspective, I can't see why having a shorter attention span would tilt people's reading habits from say, enjoying 125,000-word novels to 75,000. Even if the book is 50,000 words shorter, they're still probably not going to finish it in one sitting, since their attention spans are so short. And since it's fiction we're talking about, people read it for leisure, so they're not going to be short on time and be pressured to finish under any sort of deadline. Besides, a longer work can sometimes feel shorter, which has more to do with pacing (and perhaps sentence construction?) than actual length. It's all conjecture, but I don't really believe that e-books or shorter attention spans will make avid readers favor shorter novels.

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I'm with you. Plus, I think 'reader attention span' is becoming the new thing to blame when a book does poorly or when a new writer's Epic Trilogy of Epicness doesn't get picked up by an agent. Or when their new agent says 'we'll need you to trim 10K of the fat on this'.

I read 15k words of writing in the same timespan, whether it's epic or it's a short before I set it down. When I pick it up, I'll either be reading something new (if I've finished) or continue reading (if it's longer).

Sometimes I do like a story to be wrapped up quickly. Sometimes I want the story to keep going. Neither of which really has to do with my ability to direct my attention for any length of time. It's more dependent on my mood for that time.

Tinman said:

Fins. One of the main reasons my wife bought a tablet was to read the epic-length novels she prefers. Too bad she didn't check to see if the books she wanted were available on e-book. They weren't lol. Carrying a small tablet beats lugging around a doorstop, so you would think the convenience would make longer books a bit more popular, but sometimes the accepted wisdom is wrong. Who knows for certain? Not me.

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Or perhaps those epics she loves are older and haven't been converted to ebook yet?

Many of the longer works I love are available electronically. Some are not. It really depends on the time it was released, the form it was released. As a fer'instance I love omnibus editions. All three books contained in one. From a physical perspective, I keep up with one book not three. Electronically, I don't need them bundled together. I'd like them bundled together but there's no real danger of them being separated (and lost) physically.

However, some of my oldie but goodies aren't in reprint (? here's where my ignorance of terminology really shines) any longer. They're backlist(?) now. And it's going to take time for the publisher to release the electronic form, if they do at all or if they even can (due to rights, etc).

I guess what I'm saying is that even though ebooks have been out for a while now, the technology, the business of managing them, the manpower dedicated to converting them are still rather new and it may take some time for publishers to catch up.

Just some thoughts. :/