Are ebooks changing the status quo of word counts?

[John Hartness]

Once upon a time, 50,000 words was a novel. Then it was 60K, and as paperback prices kept going up, the page count (and word count) kept going up as well. Now I see people talking about their novels at 55K, 60K again, and The Chosen topped out around 70K. Of course there are still people *cough*Mathias*cough* who write longer-form fiction, but it looks like with ebooks, people are more interested in a complete story, and aren't paying by the pound so much.

What do you guys think? Am I crazy (well, yeah, but not about this)? And do ebooks make the novella a viable option for writers again?

[Bards and Sages (Julie)]

I think there has always been a rather fluid idea of how many words constitutes a novel/novella/novellete/etc.  I've had this conversation with people at writer retreats long before the rise of ebooks.  I think ebooks make it financially feasible to publish shorter works, and so you see more shorter works electronically published.  But there has never been a 'status quo' to change in the first place, and therefore I'm not inclined to give ebook publishing a power it does not possess. 

[Sean Sweeney]

John, I think you have a good point. My girlfriend and I have spoken about this; she always says to me, "Why are you so worried about word count?!" I've always responded that it matters to me because then I can charge X amount for my DTBs (I don't see too many more DTBs in my future, to say the least).

I think in the broad range of digital publishing, word count won't matter in the least. Much like in the past, the content is what matters, regardless of length.

[tbrookside]

I agree, John.

I think that the physical appearance of a book became important in the last couple of decades - books needed to look "like a good value", and that meant big and long.

I blame Stephen King.

You can price ebooks low enough so that even shorter works will still be perceived as a good value for the money.  This has given new life to a lot of novellas that would have been in the back pages of genre anthologies before, but are now being released as standalone works.  

I also think that a lot of well-written material that publishers had previously rejected is being resurrected.  Often the work was specifically rejected for being too short - and now it can go straight to Kindle.

[Eric C]

I have seen p*ssed off Kindle readers on the Kindle forums complain about how short some "novel" was that they purchased. So length can only be cut so far to avoid that.

But I'm glad for the flexibility. A lot of today's mystery/suspense fiction feels super-sized to me, padded. When I go to some of the classic paperbacks on my bookshelf I find a Raymond Chandler at 248 pages, a Dashiell Hammet at 204, a Simenon at 192. Then I look at the more contemporary novels and it's hard to find one under 320 pages, and many are 400 and above, and my Nelson DeMille novels look like they're on steroids.

I'm all for taut writing, no wasted words.

[Steph H]

My two cents as a reader --

While I think ebooks give indie authors more of an outlet for shorter works, I do think authors still need to be careful about (a) what they slap together and (b) what they price it.  I've seen books listed at ~5000 words on Smashwords for $1.99. You've gotta be freakin' kidding to charge that relatively much for so relatively little.  And how many stories can really be fully told for an itty bitty word count?

Personally, again as a reader, I think one thing authors may want to keep in mind is:  Just because you can publish something, doesn't always mean you should publish something.  If you've got a good story, fully self-contained, with a good blurb to 'sell it', that happens to be only ~20-25,000 words or whatever the length, then go for it.  But if you're just trying to get something out there to get it out there and add to your book list, you're probably doing more harm than good.

[daringnovelist]

I sincerely hope that WORD COUNT will start to mean something to the readers - that they will start to understand what they are getting.  As Steph said, the pricing on short stories is insane.  But it started partly because the early Kindle authors could charge anything they want, and early Kindle users were less price conscious.

But I do think there are more opportunities for more lengths of work than ever.  That includes really long works. (Although trilogies helped with that one.)

Camille

[M.R. Mathias]

Once upon a time, 50,000 words was a novel. Then it was 60K, and as paperback prices kept going up, the page count (and word count) kept going up as well. Now I see people talking about their novels at 55K, 60K again, and The Chosen topped out around 70K. Of course there are still people *cough*Mathias*cough* who write longer-form fiction, but it looks like with ebooks, people are more interested in a complete story, and aren't paying by the pound so much.

What do you guys think? Am I crazy (well, yeah, but not about this)? And do ebooks make the novella a viable option for writers again?

IMHO  lol  The novella is on the rise.....  That is precisly why I think my 1/4 million word epic is seeing sales.  I have several free short stories and novellas that are geared specifically to make you want to buy the big monster epic.  and no matter what people use to sell or buy books the old saying still stands in the minds of the REAL READERS "Never judge a book by its cover"  If people did I would have 0 sales.  @ .99 cents people buy and might not ever read your book.  But at 8.88 or 11.88 they buy ONLY to read your book...........        So far in Sept I have 3 sales @ 8.88 at Amazon  and 2 sales @  11.88 at smashwords.  for the big one.    My Novella has 60+ downloads since I made it free two weeks ago.   My short story "The Blood of Coldfrost" is only 1500 words and has just as many downloads.....   People comment on "The Blood..."  more than the others too.
 Im just supplying these numbers so youll know where I am coming from.  I think short stries should be .99  Novellas ans less then 50k novels should be 2.99 and the pricing should go up from there based on quality and quantity.....   I see books (Dalglish's "The Weight of Blood" for .99 cents and I'm thinking: "that was a good complete book. Why was it just a buck?  It was worth 2.99 at the very least.)  I dont understand buyers, but I know my monster brings me the bacon.  This is all just MHO  There is no write or wrong(intended bad sp)   lol   I got to go edit my new 115,000 word fantasy serial.....    Have a great day guys I'll stop back by later and see how bad you ripped me      

[Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake']

We were having this discussion in the author support thread. My arbitrary (sort of) designation is under 10K words is a short story; 10K-40K is a novelette; 41K-75K is a novella and anything over 75K is a full-length novel. AP is 111K words and C&C is 161K words.

We can't price under 99 cents for anything, so I price my novelettes at 99 cents. If I write a novella, it will be $1.99 and novels are $2.99.

When I put out an anthology, I'll probably price it at $2.99, but I'll think about $3.99.

It doesn't matter what I call it, I price by length.

[David "Half-Orc" Dalglish]

Mathias...are you implying people buy books to NOT read them? Because regardless of price, I'm fairly sure the bulk of people are buying with the intention of reading...

[Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake']

Mathias...are you implying people buy books to NOT read them? Because regardless of price, I'm fairly sure the bulk of people are buying with the intention of reading...

Agreed. If I pay for a book, even if it's only a penny, I intend to read it. I might or might not read the freebies right away, but I will read them eventually.

[M.R. Mathias]

Mathias...are you implying people buy books to NOT read them? Because regardless of price, I'm fairly sure the bulk of people are buying with the intention of reading...

re read what I wrote David... I edited it Before I saw this I might add.    and yes I buy .99 cent books all the time when people are having o sales.... it chears them up and whats a buck.   People buy books for a buck as sympathy sometimes..... dont start ripping me.  I'm just telling it how  "I" see it.

[Sean Sweeney]

Regardless of price, I'm fairly sure the bulk of people are buying with the intention of reading...

For me, when my next vacation comes around, which is looking closer and closer to 2040.

[Ryne Douglas Pearson]

I've personally never been concerned with word count. Just manuscript pages. In the realm of eBooks, as I prep to release several, I am looking at things this way: under 100 pages (short story collections, etc...) will be .99. 101-200 pages, 1.99. And so on in blocks of 100 pages. Personally, I can't see charging more than 3.99 for a novel right now. Can't say that would never happen, but 3.99 is a price point I'm comfortable with. But, as always, 300+ pages of drivel will be hard to give away, so I worry about quality before quantity.

[Bards and Sages (Julie)]

My two cents as a reader --

While I think ebooks give indie authors more of an outlet for shorter works, I do think authors still need to be careful about (a) what they slap together and (b) what they price it.  I've seen books listed at ~5000 words on Smashwords for $1.99. You've gotta be freakin' kidding to charge that relatively much for so relatively little.  And how many stories can really be fully told for an itty bitty word count?

Consider this:

Semi-pro rates are from 1 - 4 cents a word.  I pay 1 cent/word for stories I publish in our quarterly journal.  At $1.99, the author needs to sell over 25 copies to break even with what he or she could make on the open market submitting it to a publisher paying even semi-pro rates.  At 99 cents, she needs to sell over 50 (alloting for Smashwords' cut).  At 50 cents, she needs to sell over a 100.  All this assumes she invested nothing in editing, proofreading, or marketing (both in time and actual money). 

So, I don't think it is all too strange for one to hope to earn $1.99 on a story of 5,000 words.  Though the numbers show it makes more sense to submit a story of that size to a publisher and then take the money and run!

[M.R. Mathias]

Consider this:

Semi-pro rates are from 1 - 4 cents a word.  I pay 1 cent/word for stories I publish in our quarterly journal.  At $1.99, the author needs to sell over 25 copies to break even with what he or she could make on the open market submitting it to a publisher paying even semi-pro rates.  At 99 cents, she needs to sell over 50 (alloting for Smashwords' cut).  At 50 cents, she needs to sell over a 100.  All this assumes she invested nothing in editing, proofreading, or marketing (both in time and actual money). 

So, I don't think it is all too strange for one to hope to earn $1.99 on a story of 5,000 words.  Though the numbers show it makes more sense to submit a story of that size to a publisher and then take the money and run!

If I cant make a whole dollar then I'm gonna give it away.  This again is just MHP, Bards I have no idea about the pro side, but selling at 11.88 at samsh I make 90%  you do the math.  My 1 sale is like a short story selling 50 copies.  So I just give away the short story and hope that those 50 copies bring me two or three or 10 sales.   

@ Dalglish  looking around the house I see at least 400 books in the living room shelves alone.  I have read maybe thirty of them.  So yes people buy books and never read them....

[EllenFisher]

This has been true for a while, IMHO.  I wrote my first novella in 2004, I believe.  I couldn't have sold it to New York, but my e-publisher was happy enough to snap it up.  I've written novellas for three different e-pubs at this point, and it seems like quite a lot of what is turned out by small e-pubs is novellas.  I think this is one of the nice things about small press and indie publishing-- you can write a story at whatever length you want.  Whether it's too short or too long to sell to a trad publisher doesn't matter.  It just has to be as long as you think it should be.

[daringnovelist]

Consider this:

Semi-pro rates are from 1 - 4 cents a word.  I pay 1 cent/word for stories I publish in our quarterly journal.  At $1.99, the author needs to sell over 25 copies to break even with what he or she could make on the open market submitting it to a publisher paying even semi-pro rates.  At 99 cents, she needs to sell over 50 (alloting for Smashwords' cut).  At 50 cents, she needs to sell over a 100.  All this assumes she invested nothing in editing, proofreading, or marketing (both in time and actual money). 

So, I don't think it is all too strange for one to hope to earn $1.99 on a story of 5,000 words.  Though the numbers show it makes more sense to submit a story of that size to a publisher and then take the money and run!

Well, if you're pricing it with the idea of only selling 25 copies, that's what I'd call a self-fulfilling prophesy.  (Also, making a professional rate is not "breaking even."  Breaking even is covering your costs, not measuring whether one revenue stream is better than another.  Especially in a business like this where you can do both.)

I am all for setting a price you have to set.  You're right, it is a matter of business sense:  If your customers don't want to pay a fair price, then you shouldn't lower it, you should take the item off the market.  But first consider that maybe that price isn't a fair estimation of your costs or the value of the product.  Maybe the price reflects the costs of your weaknesses as a business person - and it's unfair to ask the customer to underwrite the cost of your learning curve.

Maybe not, but imho, it's a lot more fruitful to think about how you could improve your sales than to go around justifying a price that nobody wants to pay. 

But if a sufficient number of people want to pay it, hey, go for it. (Like the kid in the joke said, "At a million bucks for a glass of lemonade, I only have to have one customer!")

Camille

[ellenoc]

I too have seen a lot of complaints in various forums from people who bought something not realizing how short it was. One thread mentioned wanting to know how many Kindle locations were in a book, so I stick it at the end of my descriptions. What the heck. If it makes one reader happy.... I will also admit to having bought something thinking it was a novel once and when I found it was a novella feeling cheated. And that's an author who will never get another dime from me. So IMO what you price your short works for is up to you, but you'd be wise to make sure it's labeled so people know what they're getting before they buy.

Also I believe a lot of Kindle people buy inexpensive books they never read. Maybe they intended to at the time they got it, but when people have TBRs of hundreds, some of those books will never be read and since a lot of people don't bother to sample inexpensive books, they're treating the whole book like a sample and trying and deleting if it's not what they thought. I download a lot of samples that sit on my K for a while and one day I look at one and wonder what I was thinking and zap it without reading. It doesn't help that you have to go to Amazon to see the story description for most books. That's something else I think it's' good to stick right in your book for those people who like it.

[M.R. Mathias]

I dont know if any of you has bothered to stop by the Book Corner lately,  but here is the link to a thread on a similar topic that was posed to readers, not just authors....

http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,34807.0.html

[Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake']

I put "a novelette" right in my description.

[Bards and Sages (Julie)]

Well, if you're pricing it with the idea of only selling 25 copies, that's what I'd call a self-fulfilling prophesy.  (Also, making a professional rate is not "breaking even."  Breaking even is covering your costs, not measuring whether one revenue stream is better than another.  Especially in a business like this where you can do both.)

Camille

I think you may be missing my point.   I was just pointing out the economies of scale.  The lower the cost, the more of something you have to sell to recoop your investment or replace the financial reward of another method (and you'll note that I did mention in my post that I wasn't even getting into actual costs, because those vary for people).  You have to weigh the options and decide what is best.

I was actually agreeing in a way, that it may be unrealistic to price a short story at that price, particularly when there are other options to profit off of that story that don't require spamming forums begging people to buy lol

[NoahMullette-Gillman]

IMHO  lol  The novella is on the rise.....  That is precisly why I think my 1/4 million word epic is seeing sales.  I have several free short stories and novellas that are geared specifically to make you want to buy the big monster epic.  and no matter what people use to sell or buy books the old saying still stands in the minds of the REAL READERS "Never judge a book by its cover"  If people did I would have 0 sales.  @ .99 cents people buy and might not ever read your book.  But at 8.88 or 11.88 they buy ONLY to read your book...........        So far in Sept I have 3 sales @ 8.88 at Amazon  and 2 sales @  11.88 at smashwords.  for the big one.    My Novella has 60+ downloads since I made it free two weeks ago.   My short story "The Blood of Coldfrost" is only 1500 words and has just as many downloads.....   People comment on "The Blood..."  more than the others too.
 Im just supplying these numbers so youll know where I am coming from.  I think short stries should be .99  Novellas ans less then 50k novels should be 2.99 and the pricing should go up from there based on quality and quantity.....   I see books (Dalglish's "The Weight of Blood" for .99 cents and I'm thinking: "that was a good complete book. Why was it just a buck?  It was worth 2.99 at the very least.)  I dont understand buyers, but I know my monster brings me the bacon.  This is all just MHO  There is no write or wrong(intended bad sp)   lol   I got to go edit my new 115,000 word fantasy serial.....    Have a great day guys I'll stop back by later and see how bad you ripped me      

I agree with everything you just said! The White Hairs is 23k words. It's a complete story and a d*mn good one and I think that $2.99 is a fair price.
The Song of Ballad and Crescendo is an illustrated short story, and I make that clear in the description and on the cover. It does have a lot of photography, but I gave it away for free for a week and now I charge .99. I think that's fair.

I wouldn't charge more than that for either of those short works!

Of course, most of my writing is much longer. Yes, I do have a 250,000 word masterpiece that I'm not ready to share yet. I'm trying to build a catalog and a reputation. The book I'm working on now, with a little luck, will be done in a month or so. It will be at least twice as long as The White Hairs (I just passed it in length the other night) and I'm thinking about $3.99 for that. I actually think your long novel is fairly priced at 8.88. If/when I ever do release my long work, I may take your lead and go for $8.88. (Also 8 is my favorite number!)

[D. Nathan Hilliard]

Consider this:

Semi-pro rates are from 1 - 4 cents a word.  I pay 1 cent/word for stories I publish in our quarterly journal.  At $1.99, the author needs to sell over 25 copies to break even with what he or she could make on the open market submitting it to a publisher paying even semi-pro rates.  At 99 cents, she needs to sell over 50 (alloting for Smashwords' cut).  At 50 cents, she needs to sell over a 100.  All this assumes she invested nothing in editing, proofreading, or marketing (both in time and actual money). 

So, I don't think it is all too strange for one to hope to earn $1.99 on a story of 5,000 words.  Though the numbers show it makes more sense to submit a story of that size to a publisher and then take the money and run!

Okay, but there is another side to that. A cheap short story is an invitation to the reader to get a taste of your style, and a complete sample of your work. If you check The Barrow Wolf page on Amazon.com, you will see how "readers who bought this" often went on to buy my novel. If Amazon would let me sell that story cheaper, I gladly would.

[Edward C. Patterson]

Authors relate to word count for their own internal measure and for submission requirements (to tradipubs, indiepubs, contests and reviewers). however Readers only relate to page count. The location numbers still mystify readers, and I'm glad Amazon lists print page count on books that are published by their POD subsidiary.

However, for readers - Stephen King gave a formula of 336 words per page (6x9 Trade). So when estimating page count from word count, it's a good standby.

To me 70K a novel makes. Below that it's a novella, novelette or short fiction (and then flash fiction). With novellas (I have 3 of them) when they breach 100 pages you can call them what you want. No one will castigate you for calling your work a short novel. However, clarity in product description will help your brand and readers will not think you are puffing your goods. Length does not equate to quality. Many a 500 word flash fiction piece beat many an Homeric size tome in the quality department. However, some readers buy their reading by the pound. Let's not keep our finger on the scale.

Ed Patterson