Quote:
Originally Posted by Pulpmeister
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!
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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