There are few things more obsessed over by writers than word count: required word count, in-progress word count, goal word count per day/week/month, words that were cut, words in the final version.
So I love Daniel Torday’s essay in the newest Glimmer Train bulletin, “The Secret Lives of Novellas.” It begins like this:
The Great Gatsby received some truly awful reviews when it was published. HL Menken called it “no more than a glorified anecdote” and felt its characters were “not quite alive.” Edmund Wilson said much the same. Fitzgerald spent a good deal of time writing letters apologizing for having written an incomplete book, and the main source of his contrition was this: he felt the book was too short to be accepted as truly great. Years after its publication he wrote to legendary Random House editor Bennett Cerf that the book “was a light little volume barely touching 50,000 words,” and as a result “it was a rank commercial failure.”
Torday goes on to discuss an Amazon feature called Text Stats, which—if you haven’t heard of it before—may well distract you for the rest of the day.
Check out the full essay by Torday, or view the entire Glimmer Train bulletin.
Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.
Hi Jane,
great fun and a good point – quantity has nothing to do with quality!
I’ve read a lot about The Great Gatsby and had never once heard that. Fascinating. I still think it’s terrific.
Independent publishing allows for great experimentation in terms of lengths. A lot of people debate whether 99c is too inexpensive for a novel, but at Exciting Press, we’ve published multiple individual short stories, nano-collections of four or five essays, and novellas all for $2.99 or less (we publish novels at $4.99).
Which is to say: one need no longer obsess much over word count and manuscript size. Readers enjoy a variety of different lengths, sizes, and stories, and, as always, the real challenge isn’t maintaining a specific word count so much as finding the readers who want that length. A 99c short story, for example, seems like the perfect size for a subway commute, after all.
Writers are only obsessed about word count because publishers are. Writers don’t even care or know to care until they enter the publishing arena. Then it’s all about size – platform and manuscript.
Paraphrasing Elmore Leonard: It’s done when I say it’s done.
Thanks for reading, all!
I couldn’t agree with these comments more. One ebook thing I’d have liked to have touched on in the piece: I’ve begun reading my _own_ manuscripts on my Kindle, and in a weird way, length issues have been mitigated.
I recently showed a copy of a new, short-ish novel manuscript to a novelist friend. He read it, and didn’t mention length at all. When I asked if its relatively small size seemed a stumbling block, he said, “Well, I read it on my Kindle. And it was exactly 100% long.”
So maybe ebook technology will allow us to perceive length as an aesthetic/emotional experience, and not a quantitive one? That’d be nice, or different, anyway.
It’s all about words =)
Since I am obsessing about the overly long length of my memoir ms., and having just -re-read and reviewed Gatsby as a “memoir” (in Nick’s POV and setup) on my blog, this post sure is timely. Per Fitzgerald’s comment: I think it reflects how shattered his confidence and spirit were late in his life and career. And by late, keep in mind that he died at only 44.
He was at the height of his powers when he wrote Gatsby and slaved over its revision. It is a short novel, but as close to perfect as we may see in terms of story arc, characters, tone, symbolism, and language use—to not exhaust the list! So I respectfully disagree with its creator; he must have been seizing on what some of the harsh critics were saying: too short to be great. That it is short is obvious; that it is almost perfect must have taken some time to dawn.
Incidentally, I spent years in university press book publishing. A nicer upper-limit ms. length for them is about 300 pages—or a 265-page book, depending on design, of course. Many want memoirs to be much shorter. But 265 pages isn’t too awfully long and is a “nice” length, as a rule of thumb. Many trade house memoirs greatly exceed this, but not by much, indicating their mss. were about 340 pages to make a 300-page book. Just what I am noticing or went by myself at our press.
I love the idea that ebooks could change the way we view word count. There’s something very satisfying about a short story, and not all great stories will take 75,000+ words to tell. Plus, I think there will be a growing audience for shorter works in our ever more frenetic world. For people who don’t read as much or don’t have as much time to read, a shorter story allows them to finish before they forgot where the story started.
Jane, I just read Daniel’s article and it’s fantastic: thought-provoking stuff. Thanks so much for bringing it to everyone’s attention.
I come to this as a publisher/editor and it can be a hugely divisive issue between publisher and author. It seems to me that a publisher’s view of length is a fairly complex mix of commercial and aesthetic or content-driven considerations – with the publisher mediating between the author’s creative wishes and the market.
By the time a book is complete, if it’s under contract, the publisher will already have set the production budget, tailored to meet a price point. When an author seriously under- or over-delivers, it creates a wave of pretty fast decision-making in the editorial and sales teams, and it’s the publisher’s job to either rework the budget, reset the price, or (most often) negotiate revisions with the author. The goal is to achieve a length that’s both creatively workable (i.e. produces a complete, satisfying piece of writing) and acceptable to the market. So a good editor applies creative thinking to what’s basically, for them, a business problem.
Ebooks won’t change that dynamic, I reckon, since the cost of prep for the materials is still dependent on length. But others may disagree with me!
At the mid-size publisher I worked at, the primary reason to keep any book to a certain length was directly tied to print production costs. If there were no increase in cost, there would have rarely been an objection, even if that meant an increase in copyediting/proofreading/indexing costs. Those expenses were minimal compared to the extra production & shipping costs.
Of course this assumes that adding length is also adding quality and value. That’s not always the case.
Hi Jane – thanks for your reply. It’s such an interesting issue! As you say, it’s about the right look at the price point. You’re right on the money about print production costs, of course, although I’ve certainly been quizzed about extra editorial spend at transmittal stage too (maybe in the spirit of every penny counts/editor, justify thyself!).
Changes to word length post-contract can also mean that the book proposal didn’t include something essential – so a longer book might mean a more complete (and saleable) book at the end of the day. From a pragmatic viewpoint, too, if you’re likely to
seriously upset the author by insisting on 250 pages and not a jot more,
it can sour a good working relationship. So I’m with you about the need for wiggle room.
With price points for ebooks still arguably in flux, can we know yet where customer expectations will settle, as far as amount of content readers expect for their dollar? I’d love to read more about it – who do you think is writing the best analysis on this?
Thanks again, Jane – you’ve got me thinking, as always. Cheers.
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