Novellas: Yay or Nay?

When you pick a book up from the shelf you're typically looking at a full length novel. Many publishers will only put out these full length books, but the market has started to shift some. Lots of people still want a nice thick book, but shorten books are starting to pick back up.

Novellas have a lot to offer readers that have a full schedule. Once upon a time these short novels held a special place in the reading world. They were dim-novels and magazine stories. Animal Farm and The War of the Worlds are both novellas.

So what's a novella?

It's not just a matter of word count. Novellas are shorter, with less than 40k words, but they also have fewer conflicts than a full length novel. They are also longer than short stories which cut off around 10k for most publishers. (15k for others). This means they have more room for character development.

Just Beyond Daybreak and Caught by Nightfall, from my Star Crossed Series, are both novellas and the next three books will also be this length. I chose this length because I've discovered a wonderful benefit to shorter books. Most of my readers are women and women are busy. Not saying men aren't busy, but they aren't normally my readers so... Anyway, a busy mom, career woman, working student, any of these women are looking for whatever time they can. A novella offers them a complete read in half the time as a full length novel.

I'm not saying they're throwing the novels to the side, but a novella can be more easily worked into their schedule. We all know how great it feels to read a new story. I know I can get sucked into a new book pretty quick and hate having to put it down to get back to real life. So, it can take me a while to finish a book if I don't carve out the time. (Normally a Saturday night while everyone else is sleeping)

That's where a novella comes in. It's a lot easier to cut a few hours out of a schedule than a handful or more. They're short, compact books that offer almost as much (in some cases more) than full length novels. I could have played with Just Beyond Daybreak, fleshed it out and made it longer, but the story was there without that.

In the end a novella is a great choice for those busy readers. You don't have to give up the long novels, but with the "novel lite" you can enjoy even more reading set to your schedule.

So, let me know what you think. Novellas: Yay or Nay?


Peace and Love