Authors are just as prone to cognitive dissonance when received wisdom about the publishing industry is challenged, as this series of tweets demonstrates.
That tweet is not a statement of personal preference or opinion. It is based on objective market data. As of this writing, the top three books in Science Fiction > Adventure: The Gender Game, Artemis, and Ready Player One are 418 pages, 322 pages, and 386 pages, respectively.
On the indie side, which is more relevant to our purposes, the longest Galaxy’s Edge book is 424 pages, and the most recent weighs in at a mere 277.
All of this information is readily available, but that didn’t stop commenters from opining in ignorance.
Do some readers prefer longer novels? Certainly, but the particular is not the general.
As for genre, the effects of book length on story are beside the point. My goal is to help new indie authors succeed. A major contributing factor to an author’s success is writing to market. Fantasy might be even more tarnished than science fiction. The thriller genre is thriving, and as the commenter above noted, thrillers tend to be short.
Also vital to indie publishing success is releasing new content regularly and frequently. Basic math dictates that it’s much harder to release a 300,000 word cube every month than a lean 50,000 word short novel–which happened to be the pulp standard.
Sadly, the point continued to elude the Dunning-Kruger set.
I’m sure all the Japanese light novelists in this blog’s readership feel vindicated.
But it was this explanatory tweet that garnered several responses invoking what I now call Sanderson’s Law.
I’ll let this exchange speak for itself.
The future of publishing is indie. Being part of that future means writing to market, releasing frequent regular content, and working the algorithm. That goes for Brandon Sanderson, too.
