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I've got to agree that what holds or loses my interest is the story, not the length. That being said however I do think there is a slightly greater percentage of 'poor' stories in longer books. I attribute that to the room the writer has to 'play' with. As an example I just finished re-reading the Fuzzy series started by H Beam Piper and 'finished' by William Tuning & Ardath Mayhar. Piper learned his craft writing for the pulps, of course. His stories were both significantly shorter & better paced than the others. The other writers, presumably because they knew they could write longer books, added more details to the background & included more characters-coming much closer to the point where I'd lose interest. I never did, quite, but I do suspect that if the whole series had been written by the posthumous writers it would have been significantly worse. Was it that the writers simply weren't as good as Piper? Possibly, but I've also heard that when a writer's room is constricted, i.e. writing short stories, the writer learns to focus on what's important & drop the extraneous stuff that just gets in the way of the readers' enjoyment.
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