Every one of us knows the old adage about not judging a book by its cover – though this rarely has anything to do with our beloved books – but what of judging one by its weight? No, this isn't an obscure commentary on obesity, but a glance at an issue that few seem to discuss despite its relevance in contemporary publishing.
What, then, is the ideal weight of the modern novel? Certain genres have conventions covering length – crime novels average at between 80 000 and 100 000 words, formatted at between 300 and 500 pages, and agents and publishers will gladly issue these as guidelines to prospective authors. High fantasy novels are known for their massive page counts and this is often a key point of their detractors – after all, it a misnomer and an amateur mistake of many new authors to equate length with storytelling ability. Agents these days will generally prefer shorter novels, mainly for economic reasons, though there is still a lower limit that they expect new authors to hit before even considering their work. Meanwhile, overwritten and fat-jacketed novels still sell like wildfire – see Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, as well as George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire as it highlights this traditional fantasy trait.
Why, then is it relevant now?
Because of the Kindle. It is likely that the eBook format will fade with time and paperbacks will reclaim their position as the go-to format. The argument for practicality, whilst sounding rational, has no precedent to support it and is unlikely to give eBooks a stronger foothold with bibliophiles than what they already had. Meanwhile, however, agents are humming and hawing over their desks, pushing aside promising manuscripts as they try to work out a formula for what is and isn't going to sell. A collection of fairly ‘samey’ lit fiction is released every year, along with a devastating barrage of genre work that is all cloned from the same best-seller as every publishing house tries to ride out the wave as hard as they can. Piles of failed projects sit in warehouses and wait to be pulped. In other words, they’re doing things the same way they've always done them and the climate remains completely unpredictable. At the same time, indie publishing is sky-rocketing. There are unrepresented authors all over the internet selling tens of thousands of books, both in electronic and print form, and just about any work they can think of is available to any reader with a connection and a bank card (see the alarming rise in self-published erotica and its surprisingly large reader base on Amazon). The point is that the future of the publishing industry is as up in the air as it ever has been. Costs affect the authors and the audience as much as the publishers and distributors, and minute factors like words per page and pages per novel may need to be as carefully considered as content itself when trying to stand out from the crowd.