Back to the Novel--Your tips?

[RedHairedandFriendly]

Years ago I would not have wanted to read a book like that, but my taste has changed - for the better I think.

 

[BONNIEBREA]

I have always been told anything over 50K is a novel. I don't mean just from my time here on Lit. but I mean from my creative writing class that I took two-three years ago as well as while I was in school - 20 years ago (so sad). I guess it depends on the person hearing the numbers and the person giving the numbers.

I noticed this, too, when I started writing e-book stories. My last story is about 140K words and in the e-book world is considered an 'epic novel'. I just look at it as a pretty standard length novel.

For comparison: the three volumes of the Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King - are 187K, 155K, and 131K words, respectively. Individually, they seem pretty ordinary length novels to me.

It strikes me as odd that the designations of longer works are applied to shorter works in the e-book world, particularly considering that relative to print publishing the costs of publishing an e-book are negligible.

 

[sr71plt]

It strikes me as odd that the designations of longer works are applied to shorter works in the e-book world, particularly considering that relative to print publishing the costs of publishing an e-book are negligible.

In my experience, they aren't. In mainstream print, there's no distinction on length beyond novel (which traditionally started at 60,000 words--and didn't go much above 150,000 because there were limits on the spine width a binder can handle).

 

[sr71plt]

Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness is 110 pages in the paperback I have. But I bet the word count is ridiculous, there is virtually no dialogue in it, its all narrative so every page is just blocks of text.

Again pages don't equate to wordage very well at all. You can manipulate words-per-page by changing the font, the font size, the leading (the space between words), the spacing between lines, the margins, the amount of drop in chapter titles, whether you continue a chapter opener on the next page or the next verso page . . .

 

[lovecraft68]

Again pages don't equate to wordage very well at all. You can manipulate words-per-page by changing the font, the font size, the leading (the space between words), the spacing between lines, the margins, the amount of drop in chapter titles, whether you continue a chapter opener on the next page or the next verso page . . .

Yeah.....

Daunting in the formatting sense. I was thinking of cheaping out and formatting my novel myself. This way when I go through create space for a print edition I would be paying them very little as the cover and editing will already be taken care of.

Then my editor started explaining things to me like "widows and orphans" and some of the things you just referred to and....

Yeah I may get the checkbook out for the formatting.

 

[sr71plt]

My observation is that e-book publishers are pretty much ignoring the widow and orphan issues--and buyers/readers aren't hyperventilating over that.

 

[lovecraft68]

My observation is that e-book publishers are pretty much ignoring the widow and orphan issues--and buyers/readers aren't hyperventilating over that.

For e-books I'm sure. I'm formatting that myself. I'm speaking of a POD edition where that would matter.

 

[sr71plt]

For e-books I'm sure. I'm formatting that myself. I'm speaking of a POD edition where that would matter.

So was I.

 

[lovecraft68]

So was I.

So you're saying that in your experience, when people are reading they don;t care if a sentence starts on one page and finishes on another and all that sloppy crap?

 

[sr71plt]

So you're saying that in your experience, when people are reading they don;t care if a sentence starts on one page and finishes on another and all that sloppy crap?

Not erotica, no, apparently not. I don't see any erotica publishers bothering with it, nor any erotica book readers complaining about it.

 

[lovecraft68]

Not erotica, no, apparently not. I don't see any erotica publishers bothering with it, nor any erotica book readers complaining about it.

I guess when you read with one hand you're less likely to notice things like that.