1. Travis Perry says:

    I’m really impressed by the effort Cruciform Press is making here and I hope it does very well in sales. And I agree that novellas can be amazing!

  2. The novellas McEwen lists are some of my favorite works of literature. Through he refers to only by the author’s name, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is one of my top-five favorite pieces of fiction; and a powerful and very Christian work of art. I write novellas and hope they will indeed see their day.

  3. Tolstoy wrote some GREAT novellas. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Master and Man. I love The Metamorphosis. Kafka chose just the right length for this literary gem. Long enough but no longer.

    Spec fiction works well in this form because it demands a suspension of belief from the reader a novel length story might not be able to pull off, but allows for more world building than a short story would.

    As far as epics go, string a bunch of novellas repeating the same characters and settings in a series. Or publish novella length installments as a serial. Stephen King tried to bring back the serialized novel when the internet was younger. He emailed a chapter every few weeks and asked for readers to send him a dollar for the privilege using the honor system. Few paid. (Shocking, huh?)

    But it looks like the right way has been found now. Publish 100 page installments on Amazon/other sites every 2 or 3 months. Readers can pay for each installment if they want to read. The first installment should be free. Unless you are as famous as King.

  4. I don’t know how many books I have abandoned reading halfway in, at least in part due to the ungainly padding required to get them up to novel length. As writers, we need not waste our readers time with extra fluff. Stick to the good stuff. Make shorter books.

What do you think?