Does size matter in the book industry?

[Joe McCoubrey]

The book industry is undergoing changes like never before. It’s a brave new world for first-time authors who are finding more and more opportunities to put their work out there for all to see.

Self-publishing and the explosion of e-reader gadgets mean that old market-entry barriers are crumbling for wannabee writers. The sky appears to be limitless

As a result we are seeing all manner of books hitting the e-shelves with new genre descriptions and classifications constantly entering the publishing lexicon. The last time I looked Amazon has 1,384,268 books listed in its Kindle section, of which 833,279 are labelled as non-fiction and 551,963 as fiction.

Don’t ask me what accounts for the missing 363, but if anyone knows I’d be grateful for an answer!

I want to concentrate on fictional offerings. The classifications and sub-classifications are constantly changing, though it will be of little surprise to most that the runaway genre leader in terms of title numbers is Romance (79,408 titles are currently on offer).

The total titles in the other main classifications are:

Crime, Mystery & Thriller 73,053
Children’s Fiction 62,376
Erotica 56,027
Fantasy 37,818
Action/Adventure 37,474

Beneath this you’ll find another dozen or so classifications, all with impressively high numbers, including lists for Fairy Tales, Religious Fiction, Family Saga, Gay & Lesbian, Movie Tie-ins, Political Fiction etc. etc.

One other group interests me the most. It is the Short Stories classification which currently has 23,839 titles and is growing at a fast rate of knots, mainly due to an increasing awareness by authors of its potential to market their individual brands. It is being used more and more so by established writers as well as by newbies.

On top of single short-story titles there are 4,351 Anthologies, comprising anywhere between 10 and 40 shorts. I was recently included in an anthology with 36 other authors and was surprised by the growing popularity of this medium.

Now that I’ve set the background, I need to try to answer the question I started out with – does size matter?

The statistics outlined above prove there is a demand by readers for all types and flavours of books. When we think of novels we automatically assume them to be 300-400 pagers that will keep readers going over a holiday break or at least for a decent few long nights. That is no longer the case.

However, whilst the clamour for bite-sized offerings cannot be ignored writers need to have some consistency in what they offer. Readers need to know what they are buying and whether it represents value for money, in terms of size.

Amazon is being increasingly helpful in its individual book descriptions. Not all books are described as ‘shorts’ or ‘novellas’ but one glance at the “File Size” or “Estimated Print Length” will alert potential buyers to what they are getting.

Size should be reflected in the cover price – and to be fair to most authors it usually is.

What is important is that writers, both old and new, are responding to market trends in a way never seen before. As you read this piece there are literally hundreds of authors slaving over keyboards to bring readers the next wave of literary entertainment.

Whatever they produce should be judged solely on the merits of quality over quantity.

[Bluefirerose]

I agree; the size of the book should be reflected in its price. However, who is to set these prices and how? Should it be by word count, or how much data it consists of? I recently bought an ebook that was pretty short but there were several pictures which made it even shorter. How should that be reflected in price?

[ALynnPowers]

Your question is so profound, and you obviously put a lot of thought into it, so I feel like such a dork giving my lame opinion and input. Haha.

All I know about pricing on, say, Amazon (I mention this specific marketplace because it was in your example... and it just so happens to be the only one I am familiar with) comes from my experience with self-publishing. Those authors who self-publish don't really have that much say in the prices of what they publish. Amazon has most of the control over that. Kind of. Sort of. A little.
There is a minimum price set by Amazon, and also a limit to how high something can be. But the limit is ridiculous, and I can't imagine anyone trying to sell a self-publish book for that price. It also depends on what kind of royalty percentage you signed up for. So authors can set their prices within a range, but it's all up to them. There's no standard or any kind of requirement for how much a certain file size should cost.
Should there be? Personally, I think there should be caps on how expensive a file under certain sizes can be... just to keep people from trying to sell 10 page stories for $3 or something (I wouldn't pay that...), but I don't think there is anything wrong with full-length stories being sold for the lowest possible price (around $1, plus or minus a few pennies depending on Amazon's mood).

[CataclysmicKnight]

If it's a physical book, then sure, a longer book may be more expensive purely for the extra cost of the book's printing. I'm not familiar with pricing for book publication, but I can't imagine there'd be a huge price difference between a 250 page book and a 275 page book...

At least for me, I think the most important thing is this: how much would someone pay for it? As a game developer, I create a product that (not including the time it takes to create it) could be sold for about 10 cents and break even - Paypal fees and bandwidth costs. Despite this, if I try to sell a game for 10 cents, oddly enough it will actually get less sales than if I charge 99 cents, or $2, or $5. People perceive value partially based on the price point oddly enough...

Beyond that, even for the short stories, it depends on the quality of the book. I picked up a free Minecraft adventure short story (part one of three, so they get you hooked!) and I'm quite tempted to spend $6 to get the other two parts (maybe 100-150 pages total?) but I'd be hesitant to buy even a book by a famous author for that cost if I can help it.

I know I probably went WAY off topic, but I had to rant And you're absolutely right, by the way, I'm always super happy to look at the "number of pages" stat and the quality of reviews a book has. You summed it up perfectly: "... judged solely on the merits of quality over quantity."