Is Your Novel "Long Enough?"

Books of Varying Lengths

As you may know, I've recently released Sullivan's War: The Complete Adventure. It collects three novellas (called Sullivan's War: Books I, II and III) which were released individually but make up one story line. Those novellas, usually priced at $2.99 apiece, have been selling fairly well. But The Complete Adventure's sales have been fantastic, selling in twelve days nearly as many copies as Book I, even though Book I's price was reduced to 99 cents near the beginning of the month.

I had suspected that I would see an increase in sales once I released The Complete Adventure, and here's why: I'd read long ago that many readers prefer to read only novels. They do not particularly care for short stories, and novellas? What the hell is a novella? The unimpressive sales of my collection Short Stories seems to support this idea. Even though Short Stories has a good number of positive reviews and I promoted it as heavily (if not more heavily) than Sullivan's War: The Complete Adventure, I sold nearly 7 times as many copies of Sullivan's War as Short Stories during July. And remember, Sullivan's War: The Complete Adventure was only available for the last twelve days of the month.

Now, I'm one who has always been a champion for short stories. I write them, obviously, and I even wrote a blog post called "Why I Love Short Stories." Another post I wrote as a guest on ME Franco's blog is called "Short Fiction is Dead?" In it, I propose that the eBook revolution will see a reemergence of shorter fiction. One thought is that a short story or novella can be published without the concern of making sure a "book" is of a profitable length. Now that printing costs are not a factor, any length can be a profitable length, assuming the story is sufficiently attractive to readers. Well, the three Sullivan's War novellas have been profitable, as have a few of the short stories I released individually. But my experience these past two weeks with Sullivan's War: The Complete Adventure has convinced me that full-length novels are going to be even more profitable. And while profit should not be a writer's sole consideration, it is unavoidable if one wishes, as I do, to make a living at it.

So is your novel long enough? What is long enough? The dividing line between novels and novellas ranges from 40,000 words to 60,000 words or higher. Will readers be "unsatisfied" with a 40,000-word novel? Does the word novella scare some people away? And what can one reasonably charge for short stories, novellas, short novels, long novels? I've been publishing my fiction for less than a year, and I'm still trying to work all of this out. But the sales of Sullivan's War: The Complete Adventure have convinced me that, for now at least, I should probably not focus on writing short stories quite as much. Novels are what readers want, and I have about a dozen novels waiting to be written. I just hope I can make them long enough.

What do you consider to be a minimum length for a novel? If you prefer novels over novellas or short stories, why? I'd love to hear any thoughts on this topic; just leave a comment below.

Best,

Michael K. Rose

Edit: Please read the followup to this post here.

To Prime or Not to Prime

As anyone who knows me knows, Sullivan's War: Book I - All Good Men Serve the Devil is being released Friday, January 20. So, do I enter it in the Amazon prime program?

My answer, at least for now, is "no." Why not?

I have entered my other ebooks in the Amazon Prime Program and I am, for the most part, happy with the results. But I do wonder about something. Do Kindle owners peruse the list of ebooks and mentally take note of the Prime books they're interested in with the idea of waiting until the author makes them free? I simply don't know. And I don't want sales of Book I to suffer if this is the case. I know there is an argument that making the first book of a series free increases sales on the other books but since I do not yet have the others released, I will not benefit from this for another couple of months.

I do, however, have Sullivan's War: Prologue - Sergeant Riley's Account in the Prime program. I hope that I can use the free promo days for this book to increase the visibility of the series and entice readers to purchase Book I. I also want to make Book I available on B&N and give that another go. Perhaps having a longer work will help sales at that store (I understand short stories just don't sell as well as longer works.)

When I have Book II ready for publication I will reevaluate this decision but for now I think it is the right move. Does anyone who's released series have any other tips? I'd like to do everything I can to make Sullivan's War a success!

The Future of Books

Claude Bouchard wrote a blog entry pointing out that in his household the unread print books are piling up because he and his wife prefer to read on their ereaders. However, this preference has had an additional consequence besides just the move from print books to ebooks: he is reading fewer mainstream authors. The reason is simple. If it costs the same, or nearly the same, to buy an ebook from the big publishers as it does to buy one of their print books, a reader will find that purchase difficult to justify. There are, however, many indie authors who are charging a fraction of that price for their ebooks.

I think that, eventually, this discrepancy will right itself. As ereaders become more and more mainstream and print sales drop off, the publishers will have no choice other than to lower the prices of their ebooks. I think a price around $5 is fair and will become standard. So what will this mean for printed books? Will they become obsolete?

For practical considerations, yes. I believe that in 15 to 20 years very few print books will be read. By that time anyone born now or within the last decade will have grown up with the technology and anyone born before that will have adopted it. Especially as those readers age they will find the ease with which an ereader can be held in arthritic hands and with which the font size can be increased to be very attractive. So yes, books will become obsolete. But they will not disappear.

I think that physical books will always hold an appeal for humans. Just as candles and fireplaces have not become obsolete with the advent of electric lights and home heating systems, we will not want to abandon them altogether. There is something about a book that is a part of our cultural DNA. Ever since the invention of the alphabet, the book (or scroll or clay tablet) has been a symbol. It has been a symbol of knowledge. And the look, the feel, the smell of a book, simply cannot be replicated by ereaders. Books will become not less valuable with the ereader revolution, but more. Books will no longer be thought of as cheap commodities to be sold by the thousands, but rather as collectibles. A $5.99 paperback will no longer be produced. For that price, the ebook will be preferred. But writers and publishers will continue to produce attractive, hard backed editions for an author's biggest fans, a treasure to display on the shelf and admire the way one does a cherished objet d'art. It will be something a reader can have signed, not with electronic pixels but with the author's own hand.

I think that if you consider how we already treat books you will agree. There is a reason those great faux leather-bound tomes of Dickens and Austen and Twain still make an appearance each Christmas, their gold-trimmed pages hinting at the literary treasure inside. We like them. We like to have those books on our shelves, we like to look at them, to show them off. Paperbacks, not so much. Those are designed to be read, then passed on to a friend, a used book store, a bus station bench. The ereader will not replace books, but rather just the disposable commodity aspect of books. Read it, lend the file to a friend, delete it when you're done. But if you love that book, if you find yourself thinking about it once it is finished and seeking out other work by that author, then perhaps you might consider owning a handsome print copy. And they will always exist. Books are a part of human culture and that will not change, at least not for a very, very long time.

Thoughts on Ebook Pricing

   Since I've started uploading my fiction to Amazon and Barnes & Noble I've been thinking a lot about pricing. There are some that say "offer it free to get exposure." Others say "no more than 99 cents." Still others say "Don't charge 99 cents or give it away free. Readers will devalue your work in their minds."

   Well, I kind of agree with that last point. Free is a good option to get your work downloaded, yes. But are all those downloaders actually reading your book? Also, will they then go on the buy other books you have for sale? However, I don't agree that 99 cents is a price point that "cheapens" readers' opinion of your work. It is a great price for some works.

   So here is a pricing model that I have developed. Since I mainly write science fiction I have based the different categories on the Nebula awards categories:

Short story (up to 7,500 words) - .99

Novelette (7,500-17,500) - 1.49

Novella (17,500-40,000) - 1.99

Novel (40,000+ words) - 2.99

   Based on that model my current releases Sleep (2,500 words) and Inner Lives (12,000 words) are priced at .99 and 1.49, respectively. I'm still toying with the idea of starting books at a lower price upon release, then upping the price to fit the model.

   What do you all think of this pricing model? Would you buy (or have you bought) a short story for .99? Does anyone else have a model that they use? Feel free to comment below!