Supersize is the new default

[pbray]

Back when vending machines dispensed eight ounce cups of soda or twelve ounce cans, and the adjective quarter-pounder was used to describe an extra large hamburger, it was common to see F&SF and mystery titles around 300 pages long, or about 75K. Think of Patricia McKillip's Riddle-Master of Hed series (originally three separate books), Sharyn McCrumb's early mysteries, or the even shorter books from the sixties and early seventies-- Marion Zimmer Bradley's first Darkover novels, Roger Zelazny's first Amber series, Gordon Dickson's original Dorsai novels, Dorothy Gilman's bestselling Mrs. Pollifax mysteries, etc.

But just as food portions (and waistlines) have expanded in recent decades, so too has the average size of a genre novel. 100K seems to be the new minimum standard, and fatter fantasy books are common.

Some of my favorite books are shorter novels from the past, yet when I recently purchased a 300 page hardcover, I'll admit to feeling cheated--as if I'd accidentally been given a lite beer. As I read the book, I agreed that the length was just right, but there's still that initial impression to get past.

Which makes me wonder, is there still a place for the 75K F&SF novel? Or have we grown so accustomed to doorstoppers that anything less feels a novella?

Comments

[janni.livejournal.com]

Well, as everything's grown, that's now a reasonable size for a YA. :-)

But of course, not all stories, even all under 100K stories, are or want to be YA ...

[pbray.livejournal.com]

When I was recently browsing the YA section at the bookstore, I remarked that these books were an attractive length--something I might actually be able to finish.

And on that topic, my copy of Bones of Faerie arrived over the weekend. Very pretty--congratulations again.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Yay! Hope you enjoy it!

And I adore that cover. :-)

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

I have always preferred the doorstop sized novel. I think it's because I like the full development and potential for a more complex plot that a fat novel offers. I also like that it takes a little longer to read the chunky novels instead of buzzing right through them.
I do like the shorter novels for the times when I'm looking for light and fluffy reading, ya know, nothing too taxing to the brain and that you can put down and pick up.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I struggle between liking more complex plot and character exploration and the feeling of being bogged down in a book that clearly needed a strict editor and some chopping.

The later Harry Potters are a good example of books that had grown needlessly long (IMO).

[katatomic.livejournal.com]

I always want to write smaller, but it never works. I sprawl.

I keep thinking that with the inevitable changes this economy will force on publishing, maybe there will be a return to smaller books that are a little cheaper and therefore more affordable for readers who are financially strapped.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I've also been wondering if the economy will force changes, and perhaps a return to a more conservative page length.

[katatomic.livejournal.com]

I suppose there is no way to predict it. It seems logical, but at the same time there's that "paper value" thing where readers feel a bit ripped off if the book is not a good size for the dollars.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Even if the publisher dropped the price by 50 cents or a buck, I'm not sure anyone would pause to do the math to figure out if they were getting a good value in pennies per page :-)

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting question. I've actually been reading more shorter fantasies in recent years--a lot of urban fantasy seems to run 300-400 pages, usually on the lower end of that spectrum. I do like big, thick books, but only if the story is satisfying. If the characters don't keep my interest, it gets pushed aside. And my own novel drafts are coming in about 90k.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Most of my fantasy novel drafts ran 90K-100K, which I found perfectly acceptable. And there's many a fat fantasy novel that I've bought only to set aside half-read because it lost my interest.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

I prefer long fantasies. I want to get into the world. Then again, I like Victorain novels too, and they're never short. My SF I prefer short, however. It's my own pet rationale for why current SF doesn't sell. It's all too long.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

These days I tend to read space operas, if I'm reading SF, and most of what I read there is in the 100K range. But you think about the classics, say Neuromancer, for instance, and that was only about 300 pages, as I recall.

[cathellisen.livejournal.com]

Neuromancer just got a reread from me, and I'm pretty sure it's longer than 75k.

The print was pretty small...

The version I have is the ACE paperback and it is ... *checks*...271 pages.

Gah.. why then did it feel so long? I'd guesstimate that it was around 110 k

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Because it was a densely written story?

One of the things that is missing these days is the ability to tell dense stories-- I remember reading Zelazny's first Princes of Ambers series where every single word was important. Skip a sentence and you started to lose the story. Whereas there are many of today's fantasies where you can skip entire paragraphs, pages, even scenes, knowing that very little happened and whatever did will be rehashed later.

[cathellisen.livejournal.com]

It was densely written, but I'm still going to stick with my guesstimate - I'm pretty sure it was over 100k.

Speaking of the move away from densely-written books - doesn't that tie in directly with the trend of prolix novels, padded with extraneous detail?

Because I dislike flabby novels, I tend to write lean. Of course, I always end up writing too lean. :D

I'm baffled and slightly jealous when people complain about how they have no idea how they're going to cut their 200k first drafts.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Depends entirely on how much I'm enjoying the book. If it's boring, the shorter the better. If the author's pulled me in, I won't want to leave.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

There are some books that inspire that feeling in me, but these days I'd be just as happy if they wrote a sequel rather than one enormous book.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Except that it costs more that way.

[cathellisen.livejournal.com]

I hate wading through filler to get to the meat of the story, and a LOT of what I read in the more epic fantasy novels feels like nothing more than padding.

I wonder if that's part of the reason why we've seen YA sales pick up - because adults are reading them because they're shorter, more focused books?

The longest book I've written came in at about 108 000, and it feels massive to me. I comfortably finish a story at anywhere between 65 - 85k.

Obviously, I'm in the wrong era. :D It would be nice for me if we had a return to shorter, tighter books.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

The shorter length of YA is a big draw for me.

One of the things that's puzzling me is that I hear so many people say how much less time they have to read than they once did, and yet the books get longer and longer. I could have read the entire RiddleMaster of Hed trilogy in the time it took to get through the last Harry Potter novel.

Ah, well, I've long suspected publishers don't cater exclusively to my tastes. If you and I ran the world, it would be a different place I suspect.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

I don't know about most people, but I enjoy good TA because it has stories that are just as interesting as "adult" books, with less extraneous sex and violence,

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Agree with you that there are some authors and stories for whom the longer form works well, and the length is required to tell that story. But there are a number of bloated books (like the later HP's) that make me long for a red pen.

[princejvstin.livejournal.com]

Novels *should* be the length that they are meant to. A padded novel is not better than a work which should be naturally shorter.

That said, publishers don't know what to do with that sized work, and you don't often find them for sale as standalone. Nine Princes in Amber would be thought too short, unless a small press like Subterranean Press got a hold of it.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

The original five Amber titles were reprinted in a single volume. Same thing happened to McKillip's Riddlemaster series.

And I'm sure there are brilliantly written shorter novels that publishers simply aren't buying because they no longer know how to market and sell a 65K-75K novel, unless they can slap a YA label on it.

[princejvstin.livejournal.com]

Right, and all ten Amber novels were reprinted in an even larger volume which is not all that much longer than the biggest of the doorstoppers of fantasy novels.

IMO, once ebooks become a real viable alternative delivery method, this problem will go away, since you could charge a cheaper price for a work of this size and find a market.

Sometimes you want to delve into a big fat book and sometimes you just want something much more managable. Or at least that is true in the case of me.

[janni.livejournal.com]

In my ideal world, there would be no length requirements for novels--every book would get to just be the length it wants to be, short, long, or somewhere in between. :-)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the brave new world of e-books will take us there, when we're not holding books in our hands, or visually comparing fat vs thin on the shelves.

[vespican.livejournal.com]

I find it difficult to calculate the length of a published book. Oh, we can say it's 358 pages or so, but how do those pages equate to a standard manuscript page? Does a 400 page (100,000 word) manuscript end up as a 400 page book? There is so much variety in how the printed page is set up that it's hard to compare.

I don't know if I have a preference for longer or shorter works. It's more important that I'm reading that particular one, and that I like it. I do agree with one of the earlier commenters in that an overly long story perhaps should be published as a series, rather than as a single work. Incidentally this is what happened with me and the Stone Island Sea Stories. The original story that I wrote years ago was a single book, although I did entertain thoughts of a sequel or two. When I seriously started re-writing it in the more recent past I found I was adding so much to it that I had reached way beyond the standard 100,000 word limit and was only a quarter of the way through the original. At that point, and aware that publishers often shy away from extremely long first novels, primarily because of printing costs, I decided it would indeed be a series. On top of that I did several extensive edits and even moved two chapters to the second story to get the first down under the magic 100,000 word point.

Dave

[pbray.livejournal.com]

This is one of those crappy "it depends" answers that you often get in publishing.

As you've observed, it boils down to typesetting--not only the size of the font, but the margins, headers/footers, spacing between the lines and even the spacing between the individual letters (kerning) can all be adjusted to squeeze more or less words onto a page. As the costs of paper rise, you'll see more tricks used and pagecounts drop.

For my most recent novels, I've noticed a slight increase in the words per page, so I'd expect a 100K (standard manuscript format) manuscript to come in at slightly under 400 printed pages in a mass-market book.

But, again, it all depends. For books in a series, there may be a desire by the publisher to make all books appear to be the same size even if they are different lengths, so they'll employ typesetting techniques to make this happen.

Or there may be a desire to produce a fat book to justify the cover price--I've seen this a few times with bestselling authors where one of their books is shorter than expected, so the font is ridiculously large in order to meet a minimum page count. The trick, of course, is not to reach the stage where readers recognize the trick and feel that they are being cheated.