This chapter is brand new to any version of Think Like a Publisher. I’ve honestly been afraid to tackle this issue for some time, but think I might have a handle on it.
Keep something clearly in mind as I talk about this: An indie publisher is still a publisher, the same as any traditional publisher.
Think Like a Publisher 2013 is an updated version of the book from about a year ago, including some of what has changed and what I have learned over the last year or more. And some new chapters such as this one. I’m sure in another two years I’ll do a fourth edition.
Every few days I will post a chapter for free here with a link under the tab above. The 2012 edition is still available in book and electronic form. After I get done with these posts and reformatting the book, this edition will appear replacing the old one. But that will take a month or so.
Comments on each chapter are welcome and help us all learn, but keep the comments focused on the topic of the chapter, please.
I hope these chapters help you get a jump on learning how to be a publisher. And on finding an audience for your writing.
Chapter Five:
Return on Investment
As a professional writer, when I am asked by another writer what they would be better off writing, my standard and correct answer is “Anything you are passionate about. Any story that motivates you. Any topic that scares hell out of you or excites you.”
And when asked “What’s the best length in this new world?” my answer has been “Whatever length the story demands.”
Those are my writer-to-writer answers and they are correct. No second thoughts at all. Those answers come from the art of writing. Those answers come into play for all writers and should be followed where possible by all writers. Those answers will help a writer find their best work, their best art.
That is my opinion, my answers, and I am sticking with them as a writer.
Now… let’s switch hats and think like a publisher. Or better yet, the accountant working for a publisher. And that’s where this chapter is going to be a problem for some people.
This chapter is my attempt to answer all the questions I keep getting about what length is better because my writer answer sure doesn’t seem to satisfy some people.
Indie publishers are, for the most part, writers first and foremost. So back to the advice I always give above. It is the right advice, the best advice to turn out the best stories, and that’s what matters.
But… let’s pretend for a second here to help you learn how to figure “return on investment” as if you are not a writer.
Some of my background here as a writer.
Can I write to length? Oh, heaven’s yes. You must have that skill if you work for any time in media of any sort. If a novel needs to be 70 thousand words to fit a contract, it better darned well be within a thousand or so of 70 thousand words. Period. Every time. No exceptions.
If I need to write a short story under 6,000 words to fit a certain topic of an anthology, can I do it? Of course. Easily.
Would a book be better if I let it go to its natural conclusion as a writer? Most of the time I would say yes. But often I didn’t have that wonderful freedom to do that. I had to hit word count within a certain time and at a certain quality.
That’s called being a professional commercial fiction writer. It’s a good job. And not a job that most writers can do, actually. It takes the ability to mimic a voice in words so the readers hear the character’s voice. (Think trying to write the cadence and syntax of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Picard, Janeway and so on in a way that readers hear the actor’s voices in their heads as they read your words.)
Being a commercial fiction writer takes the ability to spend long hours doing nothing but being creative, it takes the skill of being able to understand author voices and even mimic another author’s voice if you get hired to ghost write, which I did a lot as well.
Most writers are lucky to get to the end of a novel with anything more than a gut sense of what they did. Commercial fiction writers have to know exactly what we did, and why, and we do that to length, and on demand. And the demand is usually for a very short deadline. Commercial fiction writers must learn extreme control of most aspects of fiction writing skill. (Which is why I can teach craft and help other writers.)
But all that said about my writing life, I still tell other indie writers to just let a story go its natural length to create the best art possible.
Granted, sometimes you can create art within the constraints of being a commercial fiction writer hitting deadlines to length. Not often, but sometimes.
Art is better left free to roam where it wants to go and for how long.
So what do you do as a publisher when you put on the publisher hat?
Can you pretend that because math says one way is better than another, one length of story is better than another, one genre sells better than another, should you push to write that way? Oh, heavens, NO!
But you must understand the business. As Kris and I have shouted over and over for decades now, writers are business people. Writing is a business. And an art.
We all must keep working on the art AND the business. Learning both.
So I am going to try here (for just a short moment) to pretend I am just a publisher, not a writer, and work out some expected return on investments. In a vacuum. Without any thought of being a writer. A publisher talking to other publishers who are not writers.
In other words, I’m going to pretend to look at this business like an accountant in a publishing company would look at it. (In very, very, VERY simple terms.) And again, remember, I am doing this chapter in direct response to hundreds of questions on this topic from writers who might think they are in control of their writing enough to write to length and to topic in a quality fashion. Chances are they are not, but at least I have given an answer.
If you have any fear that this post will change your writing in any way, just skip this one. Please.
What is Investment in Indie Publishing?
We covered all that in the first chapters. It’s expenses, overhead, and time. Time is the critical element here, since the rest are pretty set per project. So I’m going to just assume all of the overhead and expenses are wrapped into the total and focus only on time from here on out in for this post.
The time it takes to write a story or a novel.
(Publisher/accountant hat firmly on.)
Let’s say a product can be produced at a rate of 1,000 words per hour. Each hour is valued at $50.00. (Set your own.)
So it takes 10 hours for a 5,000 word short story to produce and post to sales channels .
Short story has a cost of $500.00. (10 hours)
A 50,000 word novel is 10 times as long, so $5,000 cost. (100 hours to produce and put out)
A 100,000 word novel is 20 times as long, so $10,000 cost. (200 hours to produce and put out)
(I said I was going to be simple, didn’t I? So don’t quibble on the small stuff, follow the logic and then do your own math for your own work and time and value of hours and add in all the factors you want.)
Income Projections
Before we go any farther, I need to lay out what I use as minimum sales numbers for this kind of mind game we are playing here with this chapter.
As I have said in the past and many writers numbers seem to back this up, the following sales figures apply if you have 50 or more titles up under the same name. (And yes, I know, genre and series help a lot.)
Assumptions of Sales for this chapter.
Short stories average over all titles about 5 sales per month total through all sites around the world.
Collections average over all collections about 5 sales per month total through all sites around the world.
Short novels and novels tend to average about 25 sales per month total through all sites around the world.
Now I’m going to ignore all the details of pricing and percentages (again, I’m being simple here) and just assign a figure for gross income per sale per item. (Again, I have talked about this a great deal in other posts on my blog.)
Short story $2.00 per sale gross.
Five-Story Collection $4.00 per sale gross. (Say $.75 per story per sale.)
Novel $5.00 per sale gross.
So to the math.
Short story: $2.00 x 5 sales = $10.00.
Then add in the amount per story from sales of collections. $.75 x 5 = $3.75.
So that means you would get $13.75 gross income per short story per month total.
Novel: $5.00 x 25 sales = $125.00 gross income per novel per month total.
Say the novel is 50,000 words long and took 100 hours to write and produce. Each short story took 10 hours to write and produce.
So to equate the two you would take the short story and multiply by 10 to get the same amount of time used on the novel.
Ten short stories = $137.50 per month gross income. (36 months to recoup the $5,000 investment in time on those ten short stories.)
One 50,000 word novel = $125.00 per month gross income. (40 months to recoup the $5,000 investment in time to write the short novel.)
If your novel is 100,000 words, it would take 200 hours to write.
Twenty short stories = $275.00 per month gross income. (36 months to recoup the $10,000 investment in time on those twenty short stories.)
One 100,000 word novel = $125.00 per month gross income. (80 months to recoup the $10,000 investment in time to write the novel.)
Summary
If you take the writing side out for an indie publisher, it is clear from the math that writing shorter novels is better than longer novels and writing short fiction is the best when looking at only income.
36 months to recoup investment on short fiction
40 months to recoup investment on a 50,000 word novel
80 months to recoup investment on a 100,000 word novel.
Other factors:
— It has been proven that writing in series helps increase sales.
— It has been proven that some genres sell better in some forms than others.
— It has also been proven that new product out helps sell older stuff. (Which goes back to writing shorter novels and short fiction because you have more product on a regular basis.)
— Novels have better outlets in paper than short fiction.
— Novels can sometimes take off and you get a great contract from New York.
— Short stories can make you money selling first to good magazines and also will be great promotion for your other work.
So if you are mercenary and are only thinking like an accountant, writing short novels (30-40 thousand words) and a ton of short fiction in certain genres in series is the best way to go. You get the best of both sides.
That means turning yourself into someone like me who can write to length, in any genre, and quickly and knows story and fiction at such a deep level that you can mimic anything with words.
Yeah, that’s going to happen.
Now back to reality.
Most indie publishers are writers first and the best way to produce good stories is write what we care about, what we love, what we are passionate about. If your novels go long, let them. If you hate short stories, don’t write them.
And the truth of the matter is that if you write great stories and novels from your passion, they also sell better.
So this chapter was to answer a bunch of questions I keep getting about which is the best length to write in indie publishing.
Short fiction and short novels are the best.
But even better is to write what you want and say to hell with the accountants.
And have fun.
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Copyright © 2013 Dean Wesley Smith
Cover Photo by Edward Fielding/Dreamstime.com
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Speaking of “Return on Investment,” these chapters took me time to write. This chapter is now part of my inventory in my Magic Bakery. I’ve talked about the Magic Bakery a few times in various posts, but just think of this column as a pie and I am allowing samples of the pie here. Understanding the Magic Bakery is critical to making good money as a publisher. So I will talk about it in these chapters coming up as well.
If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery. That will help me with a better return on my investment of time and keep me going on these.
If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it.
And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated over this last year. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!
Tip Jar: Go To Paypal
This raises some excellent points. A crime story I recently wrote is too long for certain markets, and I knew that at the time. It’s not wasted, I can publish it myself. But this is why I try to write tight and short, not always succeeding, but that is the goal. A magazine sale brings credibility and would bring some quick cash.
I’m a little surprised at the results. I expected the higher sales rate for novels to offset the added time required to write them. I see now that I neglected the fact that you can write a lot more shorts in the time of one novel. The novel might sell 5 times as many copies as any one short; but 10 shorts will sell twice as many copies at a little more than half the gross (when you factor in collection sales). All numbers estimated, of course, but it’s eye opening.
And on the subject of sales to magazines: if you can pull that off, it honestly changes the whole equation. A pro market pays a minimum of 5 cents per word. Assuming 1,000 words an hour, there’s your $50 per hour recouped right up front. Of course you lose the rights to the story for a year (on average), so there’s a lost sales cost of (given these estimates) 60 sales at $2 gross each. But still, you’re well ahead of the game. And Asimov’s and Analog are now starting at 7 cents, so that’s $70 per hour. Plus there’s the advertising benefit, as you say, which should outweigh the lost sales in the long run.
For me, the numbers are moot. As you advise, I pretty much write the length that seems to fit the story. For me that seems to be 10-20K most of the time.
The having 50 titles up is the tricky part for making the short stories work. I sold one short per 100 novels last month and that was my best ratio yet by far. But only one of my three shorts has sold in the last three months. I’ve started giving it away where I can and I’ve made more money on people reading it for free and then buying my novels than I made on it alone all of last year. (Based solely on the folks who told me that they did that. Don’t know what the real numbers are.)
But that’s a good solution for me because unless something clicks one day, I will always struggle in the short form. Without trying for a specific word count, three of my novels ended up at about 85k words. The fourth at 95k. Books 1 and 2 of a series were 300 words apart. I’d like to learn to write some books half that length or shorter.
Thanks for writing this, Dean. Now all I need to do is turn myself into someone like you “who can write to length, in any genre, and quickly and knows story and fiction at such a deep level that you can mimic anything with words.”
I got a few decades.
Michael, don’t do that. Just focus on telling great stories that you are passionate about. Makes much better sense.
I was (mostly) kidding, but half the reason I write is to hone my skill. Ultimately I want to be able to write backwards and forwards, upside-down, right-side-up, with any restrictions that I or anyone else places on me.
My “natural” length seems to be the novelette, between 15k and 20k. What I want to do is learn to write any story at any length, as well as learn to identify which length is best to tell a given story. That’s a skill that only comes with experience, but I’m not impatient. I just gotta keep writing.
Michael, I often don’t know how long something should be until I start into it. Then a short ways in I suddenly just know, which is my subconscious feeding me the information and me (over the years) having learned to listen. So when I was writing for traditional publishers and I had a contract for a 90,000 word novel and early on in the writing I knew the length was going to be 70,000 words, I could plan in a twenty-thousand-word subplot loop to pad the novel out to contract.
It sure annoys people in workshops when I read a story and then ask, “Where’s the novel?” About half the time they knew it needed to be a novel and had just crammed it down to fit the assignment. (grin) The other half are stunned that the little piece of crap (their term, not mine) should be a full novel. They had listened to their subconscious enough to know the story wasn’t working, but not enough to know why.
The key with so much of this is just learning to write from the back of your brain and trusting it and staying away from any writing from the front part of the brain, including rewriting.
“They had listened to their subconscious enough to know the story wasn’t working, but not enough to know why.”
Ha, I bet this works for film too. I was listening to the director’s commentary on LOTR, and said originally he wanted it to be a two parter, and someone high up in the chain of suits said, “Two parter?! Uh, no Peter, you need to make THREE movies”.
We get so testy about length (or in Jackson’s case, $$$ and the lack thereof) that we short-circuit ourselves.
That means, then, that the main danger for an inexperienced writer trying to write to a specific word count is that he/she attempts to change their writing style rather than the amount of plot in the story, doesn’t it? Instead of adding a subplot or cutting it out, as needed.
You’ve just made my writing life much easier and more enjoyable, Dean, thank you!
Great post Dean! I have been looking for this since you announced it:)
It’s interesting to see that a short story will average 5 sales, and a short novel / novel averages 25.
I’m interested – do sales figures gradually decline with the lessening of word counts, or is there an absolute cut of point. Are you saying a 30,000 word book will sell (all things being equal) as well as a 100,000 word book? What about 20,000? Or 15,000?
Just curious what the highest performing number might be.
Shane, my observation (and that’s all it is, with some data from a bunch of indie publishers) is that around 30,000 and up the sales jump to novel numbers if you, the publisher, treat it like a novel. Problem is that a lot of writers/publishers think of something at that length as “short” and thus treat it and advertise it and price it like a short story and hold the sales down. If you call it a new novel and treat it like one in your publishing treatment, the numbers tend to jump.
But that said, novellas do sell better than short stories for us here at WMG, meaning books in the 15,000 to 25,000 range. They do sell better but not up to novel levels. But we price them up just under novel prices and put them into paper as well.
again, just my observations.
Thanks for the detailed reply. That was the answer I was looking for. I think 30,000 is a great length for a novel, from both a writing and reading perspective. Prior to reading your post however, I thought the minimum I could get away with would be 50,000 (If I wanted to see a just return). This is very helpful, thanks very much
Is there a way to flag up to a reader that the ‘novel’ they’re buying is only half the size (at 30k) than what they might expect when they’re buying a ‘novel’ (60k+)? Obvious in a paper book, of course, but not an ebook.
Although it’s possible to price lower than one of your longer novels, the price for novels of the same length varies so much that I don’t think that price is enough of a signal to readers that what they’re buying is short.
I’m concerned about readers feeling short-changed and leaving bad reviews based on price, not quality.
Julie, if a reader is satisfied with your story, if you told a great story, they won’t care how long it is. Worry about telling better stories instead of pricing of books. It solves most problems.
Also, never read or care about reviews. Ignoring what people say about you is the only way to stay sane. After 35 years in this, trust me on that one. Write the next story and work to make it a better story by learning more craft, then get it out and write the next story and so on and so on. A ton more fun than worrying about what someone you don’t know is going to think of your business plan.
Dean, I assume your calculations do not take into account special efforts by an indie writer like signing her books in a bookstore.
My personal record is 35 books in a day (18 to 21 €/book), so it can affect notably the speed of the return on investment for some novels.
But otherwise, the calculations seem accurate, thanks !
Alan, when you do things like that remember to calculate in lost time and all the pages you didn’t write. Just saying. Sometimes the investment in promotion is just not worth the lost production, especially when using $50 per hour like I do. Just saying, but you know I think most promotion is a total waste of time for any author. And 99% of indie publishers as well, since most don’t have a clue what they are doing besides annoying their Twitter followers.
“Just saying, but you know I think most promotion is a total waste of time for any author.”
I know, I know, Dean. I have no Twitter account, and I don’t annoy my Facebook contacts (I have a page where I announce my signing seances, but they are free to retire anytime).
Sorry, I’m not using the $50 per hour like you do. In my opinion, it would undermine all my efforts and my morale to do so. I understand the logic and pertinence to do it for a professionnal demonstration, though.
What is not undermining my self-confidence is my net revenue at the end of the year : even very small is better than nothing in the artistic field.
Note that I consider myself just as a semi-pro. I live in a country (France) where there are no professionnal magazines in my fields (fantasy and SF), only semi-pro. Not complaining, here. Just a fact.
And sometimes, going to promo gives you a boost. Everyone says SF is moribund at best as a written thing in France, but when you encounter a 75 years old guy who hasn’t lost a shred of his passion (I blogged about it), it gives you a boost and a little faith in the future.
But yes, you have to give the highest priority to your writing, I do aknowledge that.
This is a very interesting topic.
Dean, do you think there’s any difference in sales between long novels and short novels? I’ve always wondered if publishers’ seeming insistence on 400-page, 500-page books (I’m thinking bestselling thrillers such as by Child, Coben, Deaver) is actually based on any stats or just a false belief that that’s what readers want.
Julie, the large size of books came about over three decades as the publishers had to raise prices and they pushed authors to write larger and larger books to justify the larger prices. That finally stopped about five years ago when the prices hit their last resistant point. Do large books sell better than shorter books?
Nope. All depends on things like the story, the genre, the author name, and so on and so on. Bestsellers in hardback have standardized now into a size for the most part and all length books tend to come out in that size now (with exceptions of fat fantasy) no matter how long or short they are.
That’s really interesting about how that increase in length came about! I had no idea. As a reader, I’d often prefer a shorter, tighter book.
In terms of hardback bestsellers now being a standard size regardless of story length, do you mean that shorter novels are just being printed in bigger type?
I used to ‘write big’ in infants school to fill up the page when I couldn’t think of enough to say. It would make me happy to learn that that was a respectable strategy in professional publishing!
Just so I’m clear, let me ask this. Let’s say I have a suspense techno-thriller (i.e Matrix, Blade Runner) at about 50k words. One of the readers emails me and says he doesn’t like the length. Too short, he says. He says he wished it was more in the 70k range like other books in my price bracket (I charge 5.99). Should I ignore that comment and just focus on the next book, keeping it at my comfortable level of 50k words?
I’ve tried to imagine myself writing 70k word novels (I haven’t yet) and seems to me at least that I’d just be stuffing styrofoam peanuts into the story to appease a very small percentage of readers.
Mark, of course. The day you start trying to write to every comment you get from everyone is the day you lose your art and your own writing. That’s why writers should stay away from peer critique groups. You never write to committee or to follow some complaint. You keep learning and write what you want. And keep learning business, which is what this post was about. Understanding business. Not changing writing styles.
I’d like to add that formatting plays some role here.
You turn those 500 pages in “pageturners” so quick because there’s fewer words on the page than in other books. Gives some sense of achievement and satisfaction to the reader for having read such a large book in such a short time – “Look at this biggie, and I flew through it in x hours!”
It’d be really interesting if Amazon or some other retailer sarted adding wordcount to the description.
Another good updated chapter, Dean. Thanks for the formula to plug in some numbers — I’m not that great at math, I’m an “artiste”!
LOL
I think it’s hard for many writers to look at the publishing end and think of the business stuff. It seems to run counter to the art side of things, and be more like actual work. But it comes with practice, I’m learning, as I walk this indie path.
I don’t give myself an hourly wage. I do set the hours I work on each project and know how long it will take me to achieve the word count goal for that project and right now that is three months so for a return I try to figure out how much I would need to live off in that time period. Then I figure out how much I would need to sale.
But right now I think that is very much in the future as I’m just starting out and I thought this month was going to be my publishing start but now it won’t be until the end of June or beginning of July. I think you have to have a lot of projects out to start doing something like this.
Great post!
Quick question, Dean – where are the 10 hours coming from on a short. You have 5 writing hours to get to 5k words. So the remaining 5 must be allocated among making the cover, formatting time, editing time, uploading time – but I would like a little more specificity on how you are allocating within those other 5 hours because it significantly impacts the calculations when multiplying by 10 to get the novel. That is, I don’t think those additional five hours can be multiplied by a factor of 10 to equate to the novel. In terms of the non-writing time on publishing a novel, it doesn’t take me 10x as long to create the cover, upload to the platforms, write the description, format, etc.
lalala, I agree, it more than likely doesn’t take ten times, but I wanted to keep things simple and always error to the extra, not the lean. So that’s why I did that.
If a publisher actually figured exact times on everything, of course these numbers would change. For example, for me, I can maintain that 1,000 word pace for a short story pretty well, so for 5,000 I’m five hours, but to do a book, cover, paper edition, load it all into all the sites, it takes me under three hours. So I gain 2 hours per short story on average. But again, I wanted to show that these numbers can be worked even at a slower typing pace and more time to do covers and load up books to sales channels. That’s why I went with ten and then just did factors of that.
Great column, Dean.
I’m the indie press publisher over here at Rookhouse Books. After reading it I immediately issued an ultimatum to all my Rookhouse writers to read this column and start writing to these financially optimal lengths. Unfortunately, all my Rookhouse writers (led by that troublemaker Lee Allred) stopped reading at the “write what you want” part and just blew me the raspberry. 27000 word novels, 1500 word stories, 5969 word stories—they’re all over the map!
Could you add a new chapter on how indie publishers can force their alter ego writers to listen to publishers instead of following their muse? If writers were meant to decide things on their own, they wouldn’t have invented publishers. Or agents. Or late-night television infomercials. I swear, indie writers are worse than cats. Or crows.
Sincerely,
Kip Grant, Publisher Rookhouse Books.
Kip, LOL!!! Boy you got that right.
But I have a theory I stole from Nina Kiriki Hoffman that might help you control those pesky writers. I figure that bestsellers are made in secret code that subconsciously attracts readers by the placement of the periods on the page. All a publisher needs to do is give a writer a template filled with periods and let the writer fill in all those pesky words between the periods. Then they would write to length.
Just a theory but as good as any I have heard. (grin)
I think that one of the mistakes that we indies make is assuming that for everyone word length = price. E.g. the more words, the higher the price.
Ordinary readers, in my observation, don’t think the same way. They think, “Do I have enough discretionary income this week to buy this book?” Or, if you’ve really nailed the target demographic, she doesn’t think at all, and just hits buy-with-one-click.
Also, that $50/hr wage is pretty high for the vast majority of us indies. We’ll actually hit our goals much, much sooner if we consent to be “paid” less per hour. I’m placing my own “wage” at $20/hr. This way, after fifty months or whenever that wage is reached, I can say that I exceeded my own personal goals. It’s a psychological maneuver more than anything.
Jason, that’s not a bad idea. My wage of $50 per hour comes from a saying I picked up and adopted from another professional fiction writer. “If you don’t make $500 per day, it’s not a good day.”
For those with wage thinking, that seems impossible. Until you understand the magic bakery aspects of things and realize that something you wrote in 1998 is still earning today and piling up that earning from the hours spent in 1998.
So I just use it to understand when I go PAST $50 per hour on a project. Remember, it doesn’t stop earning just because you get to your goal number. (grin)
Could you give some rough breakdown on what those hours would be spent on when writing a novel?
(I know every project will be vastly different but ballpark it please)
Example:
100 hours for a 50k novel
50 hours writing
30 hours proofing/editing
10 hours formatting
10 hours cover design
Jax, that seems about right. I was rounding high. If you write at 1,000 words per hour, then the 50 hours is writing, but reality is that there is almost always a ton more time involved, especially in indie publishing.
So you forgot the time it takes to put up on all the sites, the cover design also has a back cover aspect to it for paper editions, you have to do blurbs and such for the cover and for your listings. And so on. That’s why I doubled the time and your breakdown seems realistic, except maybe a little less on the proofing and editing and add in the launching to sites. Or mailing time to traditional.
Very interesting post. But I won’t be applying it to my writing anytime soon, because as you say, I’m really just not good enough yet to write to a specific length. I always have an *idea* of how long I’d like a story to be when I start it, but once I’m writing along, I’m unwilling to cut the story short if it needs to be longer in order to have a decent arc/resolution. I tend to be completely backwards in that I plan a 50k word book, and end up with a 30k novella, or plan a 8-10k short story and end up with 15-20k words instead. I’m getting better at figuring out how much plot I need for more specific lengths, but it’s a very slow process (or seems like it to me). Probably because I’m just working by feel, as you said – not from a real mastery of the craft.
But! This was still encouraging to read, as I naturally write short either way. I’m all for recouping my investment earlier rather than later, whenever possible. Even if it is largely by “accident”…
…if a reader is satisfied with your story, if you told a great story, they won’t care how long it is. Worry about telling better stories instead of pricing of books. It solves most problems.
This juxtaposed against the math is somehow very clarifying. I needed to see both viewpoints (writer and publisher) presented back-to-back in order to get your point: work on telling good stories. Period. Thank you!
I’m still a bit mystified by my own creative process. Why do stories that I think of initially as “short” generally run 8,000-12,000 words? (Yes, I know that’s not really a short story, thus the quotes.) Why do the ones that strike me as “novellas” hit the 20,000-30,000 range? I’m not aiming for a specific word count. And I have no deep well of experience to draw on. It doesn’t really matter, but I’m curious!
At any rate, it’s reassuring to know that my current obsession with shorter forms isn’t digging me into a difficult hole down the road.
Perhaps ironically, I’ve recently come up with a story scenario that seemed like a good fit for a particular publisher, so I’m keeping their word count and content requirements in mind as I write.
It felt fantastic to be able to look at the first scene and to realize, with minimal, “If I leave this as-is, I will end up with a short story. But if I do X, I can have a novelette—and one that will likely fit what they like.”
And then if I did Y, I could end up with a novella, but I think Y will do better as the focus of a sequel. I’ll be sure after I get further in.
I’ve noticed that when I’ve participated in story challenges, too: Having requirements isn’t necessarily restricting. It can be freeing, giving me foundation stones to build on. But some of that may be my personality. My mother does call me “Amelia Bedelia” for a reason… >_>
Pardon, I meant “with minimal effort” in that second paragraph.
I always enjoy reading your posts on these topics, as well as the comments. They keep me on my toes.
I don’t know whether this technique would be useful to anyone else here, but I get around the problem you mention by doing a variation on your “short story + short story collection” bundling.
I write novellas and novelettes that are in series. (I’m afraid I do call my under-40,000-word stories novellas and novelettes; part of my target audience shops with publishers who use those terms, so those readers won’t accept a 30,000-word novella as a short novel.) I sell the stories individually. I also plot the stories so that the series reaches a natural climax and denouement; then I group those novellas and novelettes together and sell them as a novel.
Then I do the same thing again, this time tying in the first novel (i.e. novella and novelette series) with the second novel (i.e. novella and novelette series). So I end up having a series within a series.
After I’ve accumulated enough volumes, I zip together the volumes and sell the whole thing at my store as an omnibus (i.e. a bundled package).
So what I have are stories that are sold three times: as individual stories, as stories within novels, and as stories within novels that are within a series omnibus.
I have other series too. I’m doing the same thing with them.
None of this was originally planned with finances in mind. Back in the days when I wrote fiction for e-mail lists, I wanted to be able to have each story stand on its own, in case the reader was encountering one of my stories for the first time. But I also wanted the stories to be part of a novel. (I didn’t have the patience to write an entire novel before getting reader feedback.)
However, this format is working out nicely for me an indie writer, now that I’m selling the stories as e-books. I’ve received no complaints from my readers, so apparently they’re find with this packaging too. Since the novels sell for less than the total of the novellas and novelettes within them, readers who like my short fiction can buy a bunch of stories at once, in the form of a novel, for a lesser price than buying the short fiction individually. And readers who don’t want to shell out money for an entire novel can buy shorter works instead.
My bestseller is a $25 omnibus – partly because it won a literary award, but I get the feeling that readers appreciate the bundling. I had an enquiry recently from one especially fervent fan as to whether I was planning to issue a mega-omnibus of all my stories. (I actually did that back in the old days, before I broke the two-million-word mark.)
Incidentally, while I agree that arbitrary demands can cripple a story, I don’t think there’s necessarily anything artistically wrong with writing to order. That can be fun – deciding beforehand that you’ll write to a certain length, or that you’ll include certain elements in your story. Amateur writers do it all the time, as a form of play. It’s no worse a constraint on an author than deciding that you’re going to use less adjectives and adverbs.
As a journalist, I learned that forcing oneself to write lean can improve one’s prose. I’ve encountered writers who wanted to learn to stretch themselves in the opposite direction. I’ve encountered books by writers which ought to have been made shorter or longer. Those are the books that cause everyone to say, “He should have had a better editor.” So challenges can be artistically good for a writer.
Great post. Thx.
Great post. I’m definitely going to bundle with a series I hope to start next year.
Nothing wrong with writing to form. Sonnets, haiku, iambic pentameter, etc have provided some of the greatest works of the past.
Great chapter,as always.
There are several allusions to “certain genres” that outsell others in certain lengths. I promise that I am not asking this in order to change my natural writing inclinations,but,what are they?
I am assuming that short horror stories outsell novel length horror. I am assuming that short erotica outsells both. I am assuming that novel length thrillers outsell short format thrillers.
But I could be wrong about ALL of this.
Help. What lines would a publisher be trying to build more earnestly in the interest of $$$?
Novels always outsell short fiction in any genre. And horror isn’t much of a genre anymore, so caution there. Better to call it something else at this point.
Erotica sells well, period. Length tends to be shorter rather than longer.
It is difficult, at best, to do a short thriller by the nature of what it takes to write a thriller, which is pacing. A thriller is a roller coaster, so imagine one of those with only one drop and one turn and you are done. Not really a thriller. More of a mystery.
Major publishers are building all genre lines right now, although not horror and western is pretty slow. But the bottom line on any genre is a combination of sales and overhead to make money. You can make great money on a low-selling genre if you keep your overhead low as well.
Let me piggyback here for a minute because hearing that Horror isn’t much of a genre anymore leaves me a little unsettled, as I think I tend towards that genre with my shorts. It seems to be working out ok (low overhead, like you said) but I get the impression you think it would sell better re-branded as something else. The easy question is, what is “something else”? But what I would really like to figure out is, how do you figure that out? Because I know this won’t be the last time I’m wondering this and I’ve heard you say before that as writers we have very poor judgement on what genre we are in (and as the vaguely labeled ‘contemporary’ folder in my writing archive can attest, I’m probably worse than most!)
There are no horror lines anymore in traditional publishing. There are a few small press publications, but that’s about it. And the big names who used to be thought of as horror are no longer labeled that way in any fashion and go out of their way to avoid such a name.
Dark fantasy, suspense, dark suspense, paranormal, paranormal romance, and so on are much better ways than calling something “horror.”
Thank you for your answer. Yes, I noticed that “Horror” writers who are still around (like Clive Barker) are called Dark Fantasy writers now. One more genre question?
Hard Case Crime and some other ,smaller,operations give me hope that the hard boiled detective,pulp style novel may return as a viable grind. What are your thoughts on this?
Never left. Many authors have been doing hard boiled detective novels and stories. Never really left.