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Old 07-06-2019, 10:37 PM   #41
Hitch
Bookmaker & Cat Slave
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pulpmeister View Post
Short stories are rubbery when it comes to word count, as there is less room to maneouvre.

10,000 words or fewer is normally thought of as a short story; then there's a wide grey area and you have the novelette, or novella (both words diminutives of "novel") of 20,000-40,000 or a bit more, and then you blur into novels. But there are no hard-and-fast boundaries.

It was quite common in the sf and other magazines of the 40s and 50s to have a cover brag: "Complete full length novel"; but it was maybe 20-25,000 words.

W Somerset Maugham published "Up at the Villa" as a book in 1953, which ran to 30,000 words. He described it as a "novelette". I guess that's a professional's opinion!
The OP seemed to think that 60K was a short story, but that's a full-length novel in any genre, even fantasy which tends to run longer. We've all seen the SFWA figures and a novella is 15-17K words. 60K isn't remotely a short story or even a novella or short novel.

I'd say that half the books that I see at my shop are between 60-70K words. What is more interesting, to me, is that fully 20% or more are now much, MUCH shorter, in that blurry 40-45K word count range. Now, buying a "full-length novel" of 40-45K would probably irritate me. To me, that's not a full-length book; not enough space for decent subplots, mirrored themes, etc. That's even hard to do at 60K; really, from what I see, it takes about 80K to really get good subplotting and depth. Doesn't mean I won't read a good potato chip book, of course; (like those "Tome of Bill" Vampire books--funny as hell) just that I want to know what I'm getting, when I get it.

I just wouldn't say that a 60K book is anything less than a novel. I think that's giving short shrift to it.

Hitch
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