james_nicoll ([info]james_nicoll) wrote,
@ 2005-11-13 20:48:00
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The ideal length for SF
Does anyone else miss the novella? Back in the 1970s, I thought it was the perfect length for SF [1]: long enough to be satifying, not so long that the author is tempted to reveal too much about the world. I want to see the illusion, not the flats [2].

I'll admit that the main impediment between me and novellas is the fact that the last time I looked at an SF mag was back in the 1990s.

1: Bearing in mind that at the same time that I held that view, I also thought that you could wear stripes with plaid.

2: There was one short where I spent more time looking at the flats than the actors. It wasn't that the show was bad but that I recognized the flats as ones that I had helped paint in a FASS show some years previous.

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[info]ritaxis
2005-11-14 07:10 am UTC (link)
I miss the novella. It's a nice length.

I like the flexibility of having different lengths to work with.

And, you know, you can wear stripes with plaid, if they're the right stripes and plaid.

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[info]pompe
2005-11-14 01:11 pm UTC (link)
Yes. I really miss the time when SF wasn't only available in bricks or series of 3 to 13 books.

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[info]mmcirvin
2005-11-14 01:46 pm UTC (link)
I still think the novella or short novel (I forget the technical distinction, but that whole intermediate range is good) is the ideal length for SF. Many of my favorite works have had that length.

It's more or less for the reason you stated. Novellas tend to have more about the setting in them than short stories, and since SF is often largely about setting, this helps; but they're short enough that you can exhibit a fairly outré setting and still suggest things instead of describing them in complete detail, and there's no need to put in a secondary plot for padding.

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[info]autopope
2005-11-14 05:04 pm UTC (link)
Show me how to make money writing them, and I'll write them.

Hard figures: the best paying market was SciFi.com (RIP), who would pay about US $1000 for 10,000 words -- that's US $2000, for a 20,000 word novella. However, SciFi.com only published about 2-4 novellas a year, max.

Baen's Astounding promises to pay even more at the top end, and a bit less at the low end. I don't know how many they'll publish, but let's say, one per two months?

Asimovs/Analog/F&SF pay at best half as much and can't run many novellas -- a maximum of one per issue. So the maximum market size through that outlet is at best 40-45 per year.

This means the total periodical market for novellas in the USA, the biggest English-speaking market, maxes out at roughly 50-55 novellas per year for which the authors might receive $1-2K.

Sometimes book packagers bolt together collections of novellas -- for example Gardner Dozois' anthology ONE MILLION YEARS AD. But novellas are bulky, and an anthology of them can only hold 4-8. Anthologies don't sell as well as novels and I suspect their revenue is worse than that of a magazine.

Let's be charitable and allow that about 12 such anthologies can come out per year in the US market, and pay decently -- better than $50/thousand words -- for novellas. We then have space for maybe 100 novellas/year being published.

Now, the punch-line: as a full-time working stiff, I can't live on $2K per month. (Self, wife, mortgage, cats, car to pay for. You know the drill.) I could write 100,000 words -- in three novellas -- and earn $3.5K-$10K from them. Or I could write a novel and pull a midlist advance in the $10-$25K range (see Tobias Buckell's study of author advances).

Until the book publishers figure out how to package collections of novellas and pay the authors pro-rata sums competitive with what they'd get for a novel, novellas are going to remain the dumping-ground for failed short novel ideas and special exhibition projects. And they're going to be in short supply compared to the (much more lucrative) novels.

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[info]mindstalk
2005-11-14 09:34 pm UTC (link)
If people can live off of webcomics, I wonder if one can live on e-distributed text fiction. A big question is probably where most of the money is coming from -- ads, purchases of print collection, purchases of merchandise, or donations? Randy McDonald of Something Positive quit his job because of sufficient donations, though at about your rejected $2k/month level.

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[info]autopope
2005-11-16 09:54 am UTC (link)
One point to note is that authors of textual fiction don't tend to make it until they're in their mid-thirties or older. (Median age for first Hugo wins is something like 38, for example.) By that time, they've usually got responsibilities -- mortgages, children, families, whatever. These create expectations; it is very painful to take a voluntary 50% cut in income. (I did it once when I was single, 25, and very, very motivated. It still hurt like hell.) My impression (which may be erroneous) is that comics creators experience career take-off more than a decade earlier, and therefore probably have fewer committments and lower income, thus reducing the perceived cost of making the change.

To be fair, if novellas simply paid a pro-rata sum competitive with low-end magazine feature writing (read: over $100 per thousand words) they'd be able to compete effectively with other work commissions for the authors' attention. But to put things in perspective, I used to expect -- and get -- £150-250 (read: US $270-400) per thousand words for magazine work when I gave it up a year ago; I still had to turn out an article a week to keep the household afloat. That's a field in which freelance writers do make a living (although it's increasingly hard to do so). When the SF mags talk about $50 per thousand words as a "professional rate" this should put it in perspective.

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[info]mmcirvin
2005-11-15 03:00 am UTC (link)
True, there doesn't seem to be any way to make money writing them these days, so I don't expect many to be written.

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[info]austin_dern
2005-11-14 05:30 pm UTC (link)

The novella is a mighty satisfying length for a science fiction story, certainly. It's long enough to have room for meaningful chapter breaks and, implicitly, story developments, and short enough not to need to lose focus on the big cool idea.

I'm not sure if it's related, but I'm coming to believe the ideal media adaptation for science fiction is into a radio play. Possibly that's because blocks of exposition, whether in dialogue or in author commentary, don't seem to intrude so much in a voice-only format.

I have, on at least one occasion, worn two slightly different shades of orange, for shirts and pants. Mercifully that time I got a good look at myself as I was heading out and never, ever, ever wore orange again.

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You too?
[info]seawasp
2005-11-14 05:36 pm UTC (link)
Stripes and Plaid, I mean.

I echo Autopope. Digital Knight included three stories written well before the others, but never published because they were too long for shorts and not long enough for novels. If his analysis of the market is anywhere near accurate (and I think it is), you're looking at a market that cannot support any authors. Unless, maybe, one or two authors FILLED it. Even at 2k a pop, I'd need to sell at least *40 novellas a year* to equal my current income plus benefits.

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[info]mmcirvin
2005-11-15 03:07 am UTC (link)
It's a classic market failure! Obviously, the National Endowment for the Arts needs to step in.

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[info]carloshasanax
2005-11-15 11:58 am UTC (link)
It's a classic technology failure! Last year, there was a whole spate of stories that mentioned how RFID tech could help fashion-impaired consumers mix and match properly. I am sure it was jointly suppressed by the EFF and the Plaid Lobby.

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