An eccentric request: 1,000 page Indie novel

[Dr. Drib]

Thank you.

I'll consider that.



Don

[kacir]

Not a thousand pages, but it has got almost 600 and it is just the part I. (with others to be published later) ...

Blood Song by Anthony Ryan.
There are many, many rave reviews. The highest rating I have seen on Goodreads.
He got traditionally published in the meanwhile, but he published the book as indie originally.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by kacir

Not a thousand pages, but it has got almost 600 and it is just the part I. (with others to be published later) ...

Blood Song by Anthony Ryan.
There are many, many rave reviews. The highest rating I have seen on Goodreads.
He got traditionally published in the meanwhile, but he published the book as indie originally.

Thank you, I'll do some research on it.

Interestingly, there appears to be no shortage of 1,000-page novels from established 'name' authors; but from Indie writers, maybe they're too busy with their real jobs....

ADDED: That's an INCREDIBLE amount of 5-star reviews!





Don

[Dr. Drib]

Based upon your recommendation and those HUGE number of 5-star reviews, I just now bought a copy from Amazon.

I'll get to it as soon as I finish Diary of the Displaced - The Memoirs of Reginald Weldon, by Glynn James - an Indie author whom I admire. (He's also a member here at MobileRead. Check him out; he's a very enjoyable writer.

Thank you for suggesting Anthony Ryan.



Don

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Interestingly, there appears to be no shortage of 1,000-page novels from established 'name' authors; but from Indie writers, maybe they're too busy with their real jobs....

(David Weber raises his hands and waves a pair of semaphore flags.)

Indies tend to favor novellas and 70K novels for the $2.99 price point. Bigger works, there is a tendence to split into trilogies. I suspect a preference for a bigger catalog over bigger stories.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I'll get to it as soon as I finish Diary of the Displaced - The Memoirs of Reginald Weldon, by Glynn James - an Indie author whom I admire. (He's also a member here at MobileRead. Check him out; he's a very enjoyable writer.

OT...

I liked this, but it didn't get past "good" to "great" for me. He's definitely very good with atmosphere though. You might like Robert Dunbar's Martyrs & Monsters. It's an anthology, but I found that he too was talented with creating heavy/brooding atmospheres in his stories.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by kacir

Not a thousand pages, but it has got almost 600 and it is just the part I. (with others to be published later) ...

Blood Song by Anthony Ryan.
There are many, many rave reviews. The highest rating I have seen on Goodreads.
He got traditionally published in the meanwhile, but he published the book as indie originally.

Thanks for this. Have put it on my wish list.

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

(David Weber raises his hands and waves a pair of semaphore flags.)

Indies tend to favor novellas and 70K novels for the $2.99 price point. Bigger works, there is a tendence to split into trilogies. I suspect a preference for a bigger catalog over bigger stories.

That's what I was going to say. To get known as an indie you tend to need a decent-sized catalogue behind you, which usually means shorter books.

There might be huge indie books out there no one has heard of.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

That's what I was going to say. To get known as an indie you tend to need a decent-sized catalogue behind you, which usually means shorter books.

There might be huge indie books out there no one has heard of.

Well, my theory is that day/night jobs [maintenance engineer; all-day cook; CD salesperson; feather tickler; sanitation engineer; used-car salesperson; door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson; garage mechanic; book clerk; window-washer; chimney sweep; etc.] take precedence in sitting all day clacking away at the computer [clickety-clack, clickety-clack] writing a 1,000 page novel.

...add to that the screaming baby.....

But maybe....just maybe....there's an independently wealthy Indie author who just might write that 1000-plus page novel. Maybe.



Don
(I had one of those 'career options' listed above)

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

But maybe....just maybe....there's an independently wealthy Indie author who just might write that 1000-plus page novel.

Well, I do not know how rich or wealthy this author is, but he has very decent book available for download on his site
I have been trying to remember this where I found this series ever since I have seen the first post in this thread.

See thread:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22184
Ooops ... The site is no longer available, but the wayback machine might by your friend. The last working shapshot is here:
http://web.archive.org/web/200805091....sennadar.com/ ,it looks however that the links to books does not work anymore. Sigh ... I will try to find the book on some [legal] place on the net.

Another site linking to his books: http://www.weavespinner.net/worlds_of_fel.htm
EDIT 2 - towards the bottom of the page there are download links for the books
You want to download 5 books of Firestaff series and three books of Pyrosian Chronicles

Fel has a few nice reviews on the goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...wer-of-sorcery
And under his full name:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...wer-of-sorcery
Again, one of highest scores on Goodreads.
In two separate entries.

I have read the book[s]. For the first 150 pages it is just a pretty decent run-of-the-mill, generic fantasy, then it gets really interesting ... see some reviews ;-)

EDIT 1:
It looks like the sennadar forum is still alive
http://forums.sennadar.com/index.php

[kacir]

So ... I have downloaded the entire Tarrin Kael's Sennadar Universe by James Galloway, pen-name Fel from http://www.weavespinner.net/Worlds_of_Fel.htm

The first book has 1.8MB in plain text format.
16,405 paragraphs; 342,448 words; 1,868,838 characters (the result of a Linux wc [Word Count] command)

The entire series, all 8 books has 134,404 paragraphs; 2,896,081 words; 16,040,773 characters
At 1800 characters per standard typed manuscript page, it is some 8,911 pages. Four feet high stack of papers. A thousand pages per each of 8 books.

Is that long enough Don?

[Dr. Drib]

To recap:

What I am looking for is a stand-alone novel that in-and-of-itself comprises a large number of pages, preferably 1000-plus pages.


Kacir:

Are you saying that EACH book in this series (of 8 books) is 1000-plus pages? If that's the case, then you've found one!

Let me look over this and see if I can download one.

Thanks!




Don

[Dr. Drib]

My Kobo Glo gives a count of ONLY 730 pages in Fel's first book in his Sennadar series.

Sob.......




Don

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

To recap:

What I am looking for is a stand-alone novel that in-and-of-itself comprises a large number of pages, preferably 1000-plus pages.

I know several (not many-many, but several) good fanfics of that length. I don't know any indie novels of that length.

There's no profit in it; you can't (effectively) charge three times as much for a thousand-page novel as you can for a 350-page novel. So indie novelists are better off splitting their long stories into two or three roughly-equal parts, making sure each one has something of an ending (not particularly hard to do; Tolkien managed fine), and selling them as three books in a series instead of a novel. People will buy 3 books at $5 each more readily than they'll buy one at $15.

Traditional publishers have the option of paying authors of very long novels a higher advance, and promoting those novels to get more sales; indie authors are working with a different set of dynamics. Extra-long books cost a *lot* more as PoD; indie authors don't have the economy of scale that allows for $10 or $12 paperbacks of over 1000 pages.

So while there are indeed stories indie authors that are more than a quarter-million words long, those stories tend to be split into multiple volumes for the purpose of sales.

Except, of course, in the fanfic genre, where sales are not a motivating factor in release length.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Well, my theory is that day/night jobs [maintenance engineer; all-day cook; CD salesperson; feather tickler; sanitation engineer; used-car salesperson; door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson; garage mechanic; book clerk; window-washer; chimney sweep; etc.] take precedence in sitting all day clacking away at the computer [clickety-clack, clickety-clack] writing a 1,000 page novel.

...add to that the screaming baby.....

But maybe....just maybe....there's an independently wealthy Indie author who just might write that 1000-plus page novel. Maybe.



Don
(I had one of those 'career options' listed above)

Two of them here.

If the story requires 1000 pages and the author believes in it enough to spend three to five years worth of evenings, he can. (It has happened in the pre-ebook era.)

If the end result is good enough, the one book could even make his/her rep.

But realistically it is hard to get to 500k words without reaching at least a couple of "soft" breakpoints. Zelazny managed to find five in the first Amber set and Busby found two in RISSA KERGUELEN. So if financial considerations have any kind of bearing, most meganovels get delivered as trilogies and omnibusses, whether indie or trad-pubbed.