Monday 29 April 2013

April 29th – 377,412 – and Amazon on story length.

Interesting food for thought today. Amazon have apparently started a cull on KDP, threatening to remove all short stories below 2,500 words in length, as these don’t provide the reader with a satisfying e-book experience. This doesn’t apply to us, as we don’t accept anything below that length in any case, but we have a number of books in the 2,500 to 3,500 word range. It begs the question just where Amazon are going to stop with this, are they going to say 3,000 next month, then 3,500, then 5,000 etc. etc. Are they going to reach a point where novellas are under threat? How long before the other retailers follow suit? 2,500 has tended to be a common lower limit for a lot of small press publishers over the years, so I expect most of those affected today will be pure self-published works. The next possible tranche, between 2,500 and 5,000 words, will catch a number of larger fish. I still feel aggrieved that Amazon has driven the price of a novel below the cost of a cup of coffee, but you just have to swim with the stream, unfortunately.

On the writing front, it’s been a good day, 3,024 words on this work in progress, which is itself now approaching 13k in length and developing quite nicely. I suspect it’s going to end up as a novella rather than a novel, I don’t think the story has got that many legs, but hey who knows?

Marion has had a good day today, she’s been well enough for me to take her out and indulge in some retail therapy, we even managed lunch out, which is even better from my point of view, even if it was a jacket potato and the aforementioned coffee that’s more expensive than a novel. In fact, I think I’d have to sell 9 of my own books on Amazon today to cover the cost of lunch.

 

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