The short answer is, a book should be as long as the story requires--and no longer. But it's hard to believe that's the whole answer. Over the past ten years, the average word count for a 'single title' romance had dropped from about 100,000 words (400 MS pages) to about 90,000 words (360 MS pages). Even category romances (the kind of romance published by Harlequin/Silhouette) has dropped in word count. Are we supposed to believe that the stories we're telling today take about ten percent fewer words to tell than the stories we told a decade or less ago? I find that hard to believe.

I've heard that one answer is paper costs. Clearly when the price of paper goes up, you'd expect publishers to try to use less--either by using smaller type or by encouraging authors to write shorter. I'm not sure paper costs have gone up a lot compared to inflation over this time, so I don't really buy that answer--I think paper costs are an excuse. I've also heard that readers want shorter books. But think about the Harry Potter books? They're huge and certainly have no problems flying off the shelves. In Science Fiction, Robert Jordan (RIP) was always a best-seller with massive volumes that told the same story over and over. George R.R. Martin's novels are also hugely popular and huge. So, I don't really buy the 'readers want shorter' argument. I think readers want books as long as the story requires (and not longer).

Putting on my editor hat, I've wrestled with some massive submissions over the past few months and I've come up with another reason books seem to be getting shorter. A lot of the work we do as editors and publishers has costs by the page (by the hour). When I receive submissions, I have to read them. A 75,000 word book takes a lot less time to read than a 200,000 word book. Then I have to edit them. You'd think a 75,000 word book would take a bit more than a third of the time of the 200,000 word book. In fact, there's often a lot more to keep track of in the longer book, so editing can be harder, per page. In the time I can read and edit one 200,000 word book, I could have read and edited three 75,000 word books. Now, I don't put maximum word count restrictions on my books. If J. K. Rowling wants to submit her next Hogworts book to me and it weighs in at 200,000 words, so be it. But I'm certainly understanding why some publishers prefer shorter books. You know the line about how Blaise Pascal once apologized for writing a long letter--he didn't have time to make it shorter. This is also something I look for in longer books--the author may not have taken the time to cut out the unnecessary fluff. As an author, this is something I work on. My first drafts are normally about 10-20% longer than the final version as I go through and cut out things that don't add. If you're an author, you really owe it to your publisher and yourself to do the same. What's the line about a book being done when you can't take anything else out?

I'm going to make ONE HANDSOME DEVIL by Rob Preece the www.BooksForABuck.com book of the day. When Sara Slocum and her girlfriend find Sara's parents' spellbook, casting a spell for the perfect boyfriend seems like an obvious good idea. But when Sara's spell summons a demon straight from Hell, she realizes that some good ideas are too dangerous to try. If she can't send him back, what can she do with a completely hot (burning hot) devil? The entire eNovel is only $3.99. Learn more, read the excerpt, or buy the entire eNovel here: www.booksforabuck.com/rompages/hand_devil.html. (HTML, Adobe Acrobat, Palm Reader, and Microsoft Reader formats). Here's the cover (cover design by Karen Leabo):

rob