-ELS, -ELLAS, AND -ETTES, Part I: Why some word counts are harder to sell than others

First, a hypothetical anecdote:

Inside the lobby of Literary Agency A, a first time author sits and waits. We’ll call her E.W., because gender-neutralizing initials are hip. In one sweaty palm, she’s got a plastic cup of water the receptionist brought her—not because she asked for it, but because she looked like she needed it. Her other rests atop her manuscript, which sits on her lap—a brilliant, svelte, 30,000-word narrative that will be the greatest fiction debut in recent memory; an absolute triumph of voice; a masterful demonstration of control far beyond her years (all her MFA fellows and magazine editor friends said so). She crosses her legs, and then uncrosses her legs, and wonders if that drink at the bar around the corner was a good idea—if she, despite the tic-tacs, still stinks of vodka.

After a solid forty-five minutes, she is led into an office. Sitting across from her is a man of indeterminate age. He looks tired—his tuberous nose segues into a frown that, judging by the deep creases surrounding it, appears to be his default expression. But, we’ll see if she can’t change that! She slides her cover letter across the desk, summarizing her relatively impressive publishing record, along with the fact that she’s been nominated for the Puschcart three—three!—times, and was short-listed for an O. Henry. With measured modesty, she explains that she studied under _________ in the MFA program at _________.

The man smiles when she says this name, and it is an ambiguous smile, but he doesn’t say anything. So she asks, stupidly perhaps, if he’s familiar with that author. And of course, of course he is. An awkward pause follows before he clears his throat and raises his eyebrows. Well?

He likes her, though; she can tell. She’s terribly charming, when she has to be. Oh, and her grandfather! He sort of knows Saul Bellow’s son. This elicits a chuckle, a small shake of the shoulders. But then he’s looking at her again: Well?

It’s her turn to clear her throat. She begins with, “Now, I’m aware that, historically, novellas haven’t always—”

If our E.W. had, up to that point, managed to mildly arouse the agent’s interest, one would be hard pressed to find a more efficient method of obliterating that interest than introducing the word “novella” into the conversation. If “vampire series” is the closest thing to publishers’ Viagra, nothing deflates them more than the word “novella.” And before our poor E.W. can explain that, despite a lack of precedence, this novella is the real thing, she finds herself, with remarkable swiftness, back on the barstool at the very establishment she’d graced two hours earlier.

That a work of fiction in the 17,000-40,000-word range (and this range is fluid and debatable) is a difficult length to sell to publishers has been an accepted fact for decades. With the exception of a handful of titles by literary heavyweights of the mid 20th century—Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Pearl (1947), Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea (1952), Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958)—and a few predecessors (Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902), and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915)), the novella, as a form, has never been terrifically viable. The general consensus is that it’s too short to be a novel, and too long to print in magazines, though interestingly enough, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which anchored a book that contained three other short stories, was published in its entirety in Esquire in the November issue of that same year, and Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain first appeared in the New Yorker in 1997 (though not in its expanded form; the full 64 pages was republished in the 1999 collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories.

If the novella isn’t amenable to magazine publication because of length, the reasoning for its absence in book form is less obvious. Taking into consideration the aforementioned titles, it’s not reasonable to suggest that the novella, as a form, has less potential to be a great work of fiction. How, then, is it determined that a work of 50,000 words is salable, and one of 40,000 words is not?

So, novellas don’t sell. But why don’t they sell?

Objectively, it comes down to economics. In breaking down the cost of putting out a new title, the actual pages of a book do not comprise the bulk of the book’s cost to the publisher; a book that is 200 pages would not cost significantly more if 100 more pages were added to it. The retail cost of a book is not proportional to its length. An illustration: the list price on a 110-page novella is $12. Next to it, there’s a 400-page novel for $14. Without factoring in the reader’s predilections or the content of said books, the publisher is betting on the fact that the buyer will take the 400 page novel, simply because there are more pages. The reasoning is that the book buyer’s mental process resembles that of a fast food consumer: for an extra fifty cents, you get twice as many fries; for an extra two dollars, you get three times as many words. It’s what economists refer to as “perceived value.”

If that notion hasn’t always been ridiculous, it seems increasingly so in the present. If you read the series we put out a while back on why the short story is poised for a revival, you’ll recall my suggestion that the issue of our collectively shrinking attention span lends itself to the reemergence of brevity in art. The demand for art, consumable in a shorter period of time, is increasing. Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that longer work is or should be losing its value—only that shorter work should not be valued less simply by virtue of being shorter.

Read Part II

By Deena Drewis