Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Berk
I Didn't. But now that I read it. There is something one poster said over there that resonates with me very much. About how no one nowadays tells a good story in a short concise manner. You see debut writers churn out a ten books series, each book larger that LOTR itself. Zelazny, one of THE writers of Sci-fi, in my opinion, knew how to turn out great stories, yet his books never reached the gigantic proportion that books nowadays get. Gemmell, always great (again, IMHO), usually wrote standalones. Even his books that were part of a series could be read at any order. Yet these days I see a good book, turn the cover, and yes, it is the first part of a ten books series. And the book itself is a massive thing that I can't comfortably hold in one hand while reading...
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I know I am coming in on this thread late, but I think this is a really good point... and its far worse in Fantasy than Science Fiction. Novels are getting longer and yet the writers often still are not finishing the book in 500+ pages... I think the original Foundation Trilogy that Asimov wrote probably comes in a hair under 700 pages and he spans 300 years or so in that series.
I think the big problem these days is that Publishers would prefer sell a few big books than a lot of small books. The pre-production costs (i.e. designing the cover, editing, etc,) are probably not that much more for a 400 page book than for a 200 page book, and then of course regardless of size, marketing costs are the same. And naturally, its hard to sell a 200 page book for the same price as a 500 page book. Add to the fact that they can probably fairly reliably predict how well the sequels of a book will perform based off of the sales of the first book... and I think it is easy to see that the publishing houses are encouraging the longer and longer books.
Actually, ebooks, with the potential of self publishing, or at least lower production costs could bring back the relatively short stand alone novel.. as well as the Novella and the short story.... after all, they can all have the same web presence as the 1000 page book.
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Bill