Quote:
Originally Posted by jbcohen
Here is a historical fact for you, what you are talking about was most common about the time Moby Dick was written. In those days authors were paid based on the number of pages that they wrote so authors tended to write very long winded novels. I may be wrong, however I believe that this is not so these days, an author, I believe, gets paid based on how well his/her works sells to the public rather than the number of pages.
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Moby Dick was a long time ago. I'm not talking about that, even though that is true. Today authors aren't payed by number of pages, but big books are sort of an expectation in Fantasy. In the 80s and early 90s, things were completely opposite, and if you check out works from that period, that is plain to see. But something changed in recent years and big tomes became a sort of a standard in Fantasy.
I remember hearing an interview with Michael J. Sullivan about his Riyria Revelations series (6 books total). Those books are 300 pages. He was first a self-published author, so he published them like that. Not a small number of pages you might think.
Here comes Orbit, and he signs with them. What do they do? They ask him why he chose to write such "short" books, and next thing you know they publish him with 3 books, combining two books in one tome. Why? Because big books sell in Fantasy nowadays.
I constantly come across debut books that are in 500-700 pages range.
You know when would that happen in the 80s? Never.
So there is a standard to follow, and that's why there's a lot of fluffing especially with debut authors.