Allow me to hie to my fainting couch like Madame Recamier.
If hardcover prices don't already make you a little woozy in your weejuns, here's the latest wrinkle in softies, courtesy of my local drug store.
As I'm enviously prone to do, I was browsing the widely available, ergo widely read, book and magazine titles at a major chain. I spied a new (to me) title by a bestselling author of whom I am a sincere admirer, if less ardent in recent years. I noticed it wasn't very thick when I picked it up, but I don't always mind a quick read. I browsed the back cover. Still fine. I flipped inside for a peek at a random page in the thick of things (my preference over first or last pages). The text was HUGE, relatively speaking. It was at least 12 point font, but I'm betting more like 13 or 14. For weak-eyed readers, this will be welcome, but it wasn't stickered as one of those easy-to-read versions. Given the thickness of the book, I found myself curious, and started counting rows and words.
Keeping in mind that standard manuscript format is 250 words/page and that's how we typically estimate finished lengths in pages for agents and editors, etc, here's what I found in my admittedly non-comprehensive riffling and counting:
This title's pages were 25 lines long. Pretty standard, check.
The lengths of margin-to-margin lines ranged from 6 words to just one I counted with 11, and the majority come in at more like 7 words.
This got me to a generous average of 175 words/page on full pages.
There were 275 numbered pages.
This calculates to slightly over 48,000 words.
Now, that's an unrealistic maximum, because this book has LOTS of shorter pages due to pithy chunks of dialogue and the half-page chapter beginnings and partial-page chapter endings. As I recall it now (and forgot to note specifically, drat!
I've since checked online, and the hardcover of this comes in at 176 pages, so the word/page count in that edition probably comes closer to the standard 250/page, but what do you think about buying a non-illustrated, series hardcover of that length for the $17.95 list?
I believe readers can and will judge whether they think it's worth it. I'm not calling anyone out, but let no one tell you the long-form short story or novella's a dead form. You just can't call it that openly, and you need a reader base so hungry for content that they won't squeal at half-servings.
Is this a trend? Do you know others besides the title I saw?
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Short Stuff Sticker Shock
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1 comments:
I've always wondered about the obligatory and somewhat odd (at least to me) designation of 250 words/page. Most of the mass market pbs I read have 30-35 lines per page, with an average of 9 words per line. (Very rough average!) And they come in at 350 or so pages. So somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 words. For that, I pay $6.99. RARELY, I will pay for the hardcover. If I relaly like the author. (In mystery, I buy Margaret Maron in hardcover. Those are a bit shorter. In thrillers, I buy John Connolly in HC, which tend to be even a little longer.)
There are many reasons I stopped buying Evanovich. Although she started of with a bang, and I went through a phase where I bought her books in hardcover, she jumped the shark quite some time ago, at least in my opinion. This is one of her "in between" books. I don't know how many there have been, but they're the Stephanie Plums that aren't numbered. They tend to be short and, even if I thought her work worth reading these days, I wouldn't be paying hardcover prices for something that short.
I've seen quite a few "bestselling" authors come out with these very short, almost-a-novella books. (They go from HC to trade paper--I don't know that I've ever seen them show up in MMPB.) Because the publishers want to keep their names out there between major books? I don't know. But as a reader, I can't plunk down the dollars to buy them in HC, or even in trade paper.
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