Apparently Tor are looking to expand their output of e-book novellas. Having written a novella myself I find this especially interesting, as every agent I’ve spoken to about The Serpent’s Eye has told me no publisher would ever buy anything of novella length from anyone other than a well established author they were already making money from.
I personally feel that shorter fiction has a lot going for it. I love epic novels (The Wheel of Time is my favourite series, and that one is definitely not a light read) but sometimes, if you have a good story, you don’t need to pad it out. A novel of 150,000 words is not automatically better than one of 40,000. Other than the fact it will last you longer for the price.
What do you guys think? Do you prefer books that will give you a longer read for the price you pay, or shorter reads that are easier to get through in the time you have so you don’t have to invest so much of your life to get through it?
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Good question! I prefer probably about 70k words! 40k is great if I leave feeling fulfilled. I struggle with long epics.
I love long epics, if they’re done well. But sometimes you read one and you realise they have the massive word count because they feel that the genre requires it.