Self-Pubbed Books Shorter?

[mr ploppy]

In the 70s and early 80s, books over 200 pages were quite rare. Then the publishers figured out they could print 500 page books for not much more than the cost of 200 page books but charge a lot more for them, so they started looking for longer books to publish.

It's probably not a coincidence that readership started to decline around the same time. Books became bloated and boring, so people turned to other forms of entertainment that wouldn't need so much of a time commitment.

Now writers can bypass publishers and their silly rules and write whichever length fits their story. And guess what? Sub-200 "page" ebooks are very popular.

[saoir]

I think that sub 200 page stories can be just as good - if they are well written and fun. With eBooks there is also less of a feeling of being ripped off imho. Paying something like 3.99 for a 200 page story that has been recommended to you is pretty decent value in anyone's language, when compared with paperpack prices that often exceed 12 or even 15 quid.

[Waylander]

Good replies, keep them coming. Personally, I don't mind shorter ebooks, but I read a lot, so longer books leave me feeling like I've had my fill, whereas some shorter books leave me wanting more. On the flipside, books that are too long cough:Sword of Truth:cough leave me feeling bloated and sluggish. My optimum length is around 500-600 pages. Anything over 600 pages has to be pretty special to hold my attention, such as "I am Pilgrim" by Terry Hayes, which in print paperback is a whopping 888 pages in the UK. I loved that book, and could. not. put. it. down.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

In the 70s and early 80s, books over 200 pages were quite rare. Then the publishers figured out they could print 500 page books for not much more than the cost of 200 page books but charge a lot more for them, so they started looking for longer books to publish.

What is your factual basis for this claim?

It's probably not a coincidence that readership started to decline around the same time. Books became bloated and boring, so people turned to other forms of entertainment that wouldn't need so much of a time commitment.

And for this one?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

In the 70s and early 80s, books over 200 pages were quite rare. Then the publishers figured out they could print 500 page books for not much more than the cost of 200 page books but charge a lot more for them, so they started looking for longer books to publish.

Really, that is not how I remember the early 80s. What books do you have in mind?

And I also seem to remember that the paperback price was the same and did not depend on the length of the book.

It's probably not a coincidence that readership started to decline around the same time. Books became bloated and boring, so people turned to other forms of entertainment that wouldn't need so much of a time commitment.

Now writers can bypass publishers and their silly rules and write whichever length fits their story. And guess what? Sub-200 "page" ebooks are very popular.

How do you know they are very popular? Are they read or are they just bought.

And are the books really under 200 pages or is it more that a continuous story is published in small parts?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

In the 70s and early 80s, books over 200 pages were quite rare. Then the publishers figured out they could print 500 page books for not much more than the cost of 200 page books but charge a lot more for them, so they started looking for longer books to publish.

It's not just the fiction in that era. Many computer books became extremely bloated about then. They grew to five times the number of pages while the useful content per page shrank by about five averaged over the book.

Now it is even worse with all the screenshots. A saying from the days before JPEG and super large displays was: "A picture is worth a thousand words, but it costs a million bytes".

[Lemurion]

There's no doubt that book lengths have increased over the years, at least in science fiction and fantasy. Back in the 30's/40's when most fiction in the genre was serialized in the magazines, a novel was often 40-50K words.

By the 70's most genre novels were up around 60K or more - and hovering around 180-210 pages in paperback. However, as the 70's ended, the growing popularity of big fat fantasies such as The Sword of Shannara, led to a steady growth in the length of fantasy novels, and to a lesser degree SF.

By the time the 90's rolled around, most SF/Fantasy that I saw (and I was managing a bookstore then) seemed to be running around 3-400 pages, or 75-100K words, and lengths seem to have stabilized in that range at least as far as the BPHs are concerned.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Catlady

What is your factual basis for this claim?



And for this one?

A room full of bookcases full of books from the 70s and early 80s.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

A room full of bookcases full of books from the 70s and early 80s.

I have pages for some books in my database. Early 80s:

Tim Hunter - One on Me - 221 pages
Brian Herbert - The Garbage Chronicle - 508 pages
D F Jones - Bound in Time - 283 pages
Athabasca - 252 pages
Sandkings - 238 pages
The Many-Colored Land - 411 pages
Captain Empirical - 342 pages

I can find some books under 200 pages from the early 80s but nearly all of them are longer.

[DiapDealer]

World-building: a technique developed by some fantasy writers who fear that their readers are incapable of picking up on some carefully supplied world-hinting in order that they can perform the actual brick-by-brick building using their own imaginations.

Some love it (like they love a character), while some think it's often an attempt to micromanage the reader's imagination by filling in gaps that often don't really need explicit filling in.

I myself like books that are the right length for their stories. I've read novellas that were too long and behemoth door-stoppers that were too short. But padding is always padding regardless of the overall pagecount/genre. People just have different padding tolerance thresholds.

A page-count preference when buying/choosing books to read has never made much sense to me, but I recognize that everyone is not me.

IF indies do indeed trend shorter (and I'm not convinced they do), I would guess it had almost everything to do with the fact they know they have 100% control over how long their readers will wait until their next installment/release. They don't need to give their fans something huge to gnaw on to carry them through years of waiting.

[momsfunlife]

Very few books I read are 400 pages or more. I just don't have the time! Most are under the 300 range, ebooks are usually under the 100 page range unless they are a library book.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

A room full of bookcases full of books from the 70s and early 80s.

And that anecdotal evidence was enough for you to state:

In the 70s and early 80s, books over 200 pages were quite rare. Then the publishers figured out they could print 500 page books for not much more than the cost of 200 page books but charge a lot more for them, so they started looking for longer books to publish.

Not only did you claim that books over 200 were rare--perhaps they indeed are in your collection, but do you have any justification for assuming that your collection is representative?--but you jump from your anecdotal evidence to make a claim about what publishers then specifically did in response.

It's probably not a coincidence that readership started to decline around the same time. Books became bloated and boring, so people turned to other forms of entertainment that wouldn't need so much of a time commitment.

I don't see how looking at your personal library allows you to conclude that (1) readership started to decline, (2) books became bloated and boring, and (3) people turned to other forms of entertainment.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I myself like books that are the right length for their stories. I've read novellas that were too long and behemoth door-stoppers that were too short. But padding is always padding regardless of the overall pagecount/genre. People just have different padding tolerance thresholds.

What some call padding, others call creating atmosphere.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Catlady

What some call padding, others call creating atmosphere.

Oh absolutely. It's just some are better at it than others. And people's opinions about who is good/bad at it are just as varied. There are a handful of authors who can take huge sidetrips from the main narrative and I will read whatever they want to say (regardless of how long it takes them to say it). Then there are others who make me want to scream when they stray/ramble even slightly. *shrug*

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Tradpubs pay a lot of attention to word counts and they play a lot of games with fonts, margins, and spacing to bulk up (or thin out) their print volumes.

Conversely, Indies tend to tell a story and let it run as long as it needs to.

Which is to say, if you're worried about story length, look to the word count and d/l size, not the nominal page count.

Yes, partly. But for indies, there is also the fact that we can sell a book cheaper (in print) if we can keep the page count DOWN. So even though, for example, I may write a book at 85k words which is a fairly average wordcount for urban fantasy or mysteries, I'm going to use a smaller font if possible and not do things like waste space at the top of each chapter. The standard paperback from a trad publisher starts new chapters halfway down the page. By minimizing that type of waste, I can get less pages--and bring the cost I have to charge readers down.

I actually reformatted most of my initial books to shrink the pages used because saving 10 to 30 pages can really reduce the cost. I was able to lower the price of all the Sedona books by 2 to 4 dollars just by changing the font and spacing. (Same with some of the other books in print).

That said, genre matters in page count too. Fantasy and sci/fi are notorious for longer books in general. Cozy mysteries are generally shorter than even regular mysteries or thrillers. Romance can vary from as short as 50k to nearly 100k and still be considered a full novel.

There are a LOT of authors, trad and indie, putting out novellas and short stories right now. Publishers are asking authors to do it because it keeps the author's name out there. Indies do it for the same reason. When the standard time between books is a year, having a short story or novella out can make a huge difference in sales of the previous book and the next one coming out.