How long should an E book be?

[Lanceironhand]

How long should an E Book be. I have a number of 40,000 to 60,000 word rough drafts. Instead of having one book, I would like to divide them into two or three volumes. I find that 20,000 words is a realistic goal. You can establish the characters and plot and quickly come to an ending without having to pad it. Even better would be 10,000 word volumes. Any opinions?
How can I increase my typing speed?

 

[mfan2112]

How long should an E Book be. I have a number of 40,000 to 60,000 word rough drafts. Instead of having one book, I would like to divide them into two or three volumes. I find that 20,000 words is a realistic goal. You can establish the characters and plot and quickly come to an ending without having to pad it. Even better would be 10,000 word volumes. Any opinions?
How can I increase my typing speed?

Personally, I am not a fan of short eBooks. I would rather have 1 book that is a complete story and not have it broken up. If each story can be read standalone then separate books is fine. Serializing chapters here is fine, but if you are selling a book I would rather buy the whole thing at once and not have it split up. Just one person's opinion and worth what you paid for it.

 

[KeithD]

How long should an E Book be. I have a number of 40,000 to 60,000 word rough drafts. Instead of having one book, I would like to divide them into two or three volumes. I find that 20,000 words is a realistic goal. You can establish the characters and plot and quickly come to an ending without having to pad it. Even better would be 10,000 word volumes. Any opinions?
How can I increase my typing speed?

An e-book can pretty much be the length it takes to convey what you want. Mine run from about 6,000 words (a freebee story on Amazon) to 350,000 words (an anthology of fetish theme stories and one of my best sellers). Print book sizes are limited by the publisher's print equipment. There is no such limit for e-books. I suggest, therefore, you concentrate on the content being right rather than the wordage. I normally try not to put anything under 12,000 words under a separate cover. If I want it to be in print as well, I try to keep between a 25,000 and 150,000 word limit as being the best range for being bound and marketable. Neither the shortest nor the longest e-books I cited are also in print.

 

[yibala2]

Another consideration if you are going to divide up a story is whether there is any dramatic resolution in the shorter pieces. If you're just cutting one story in half, you're probably going to aggravate a lot of readers. People want a complete story. If you can divide it in a way that provides for dramatic integrity and emotional payoff at the end of the shorter piece, then I would think that is better. But if you wrote it as a 40K draft, it probably will read best sold that way.

It may also depend on reader expectation. There seems to be a huge market for 10K or less erotic ebooks. (Which might be a reason to write longer works, just to set yourself apart from the pack.) Personally, though, I prefer 20K or more.

-Yib

 

[KeithD]

How long should an E Book be. I have a number of 40,000 to 60,000 word rough drafts. Instead of having one book, I would like to divide them into two or three volumes. I find that 20,000 words is a realistic goal. You can establish the characters and plot and quickly come to an ending without having to pad it. Even better would be 10,000 word volumes. Any opinions?
How can I increase my typing speed?

I should have mentioned that it's not a good idea to divide a standalone story into separate e-books. A standalone story should be in one piece in the marketplace--and the word "e-book" is a marketplace term. I have several series in the market place in which separate e-books share the same characters/setting/set up but each one is a separate standalone story. This is a standard setup for the marketplace.

 

[ElectricBlue]

How long should an E Book be. I have a number of 40,000 to 60,000 word rough drafts. Instead of having one book, I would like to divide them into two or three volumes. I find that 20,000 words is a realistic goal. You can establish the characters and plot and quickly come to an ending without having to pad it. Even better would be 10,000 word volumes. Any opinions?
How can I increase my typing speed?

An e-book should be a book or a complete novella, but not a chapter.

If you're talking about Lit publishing, that's different, and there are pros and cons for chapters vs standalone stories.

But in a paying market - which is why you'd be doing e-books, presumably, I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to pay for something that's incomplete.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Complete stores over length. When purchasing a 'book' no matter in print or of the ebook nature, I want a complete thing. I don't want to buy it and then read it and find out to finish the story, I have to purchase the next installment. That will get you a very bad review and I won't be purchasing anything from you again.

On lit the theory is that short quick stories or parts of stories is preferred. I have done both and as long as I warn them up front that the entire story is there and it's long (I tell them how many words) I don't get complaints.

Now I have published short stories, usually 3,000 words or more as ebooks, but they were a complete story. No chapters, no continued on next part.

 

[ttvttp]

Price wise I much prefer a collection, too many works I want to read aren't available through kindle unlimited and thus I am not willing to pay 5 dollars for a 10,000 word story. I am much more willing to pay for a 100,000 word collection for ten dollars.

 

[KeithD]

A 10,000-word work would be priced more often at $1.99 at Amazon.