Jeremy C Kester

Somewhere between 0 and 7,500 words are the official limits to a short story. Generally, that number is north of 6, but whether it is 7,500 words or 40,000 words as the top end, no one seems to be wholly in agreement on. Now, I found plenty of resources that described a short story as one that had 7,500 words or less. That’s it. Now there’s other descriptions for stories that start to get below 1,000 words or less, but they are all still counted as true short stories. Beyond 7,500 and before one gets to what is officially a “novel”, one can find “novelettes” and “novellas”, each with their corresponding word counts.

If you are a reader in the US today, much of what is peddled to you is the novel. Short stories are there, but in pop culture, the novel reigns. Anything too long to be a short story in official terms is often deemed a “short novel”, but even then, much of what is distributed that is shorter than novel length must fit into a collection of some kind.

Recently, I broke through the word count ceiling on a project, taking it from short story territory into the range of the novelette. When I finish it, first draft through to final revision, I will expect it to be squarely a novelette in length. Given that I felt this would be a short story at first, I am a bit disappointed in myself. When starting this, the goal was to have it as part of a collection of short stories. But why?

There is a lot in tradition that we do for one reason or another. Generally speaking, one can either be on the side that wishes to dispense with tradition or on the side that holds fast to it. Of course, like with Chesterton’s Fence, one must know why something is there before doing either (although this argument is often used to argue for keeping traditions until it is known to what purposes they had, I argue that it really must be for both). With enough thought, one can likely deduce the reasons for why novels were preferable or why, if short stories were published at all, they were more likely to be as a part of a collection.

I’ve delved into this world a few times before, running down the logic of publishing houses and why they might exist, why editors exist, and as to why the publishing industry is what it is. Resources and efficiency. The technologies yet existed to overcome those barriers. Simply put, why would one want to waste time and resources on short stories versus novels? Books can be made increasingly large while maintaining a price point that was reasonable to consumers while maximizing a profit margins for those ordering the printing of a book.

Books start out at a base cost — for this example I will use $3.00. That is for 2 pages, or 1 sheet of paper with the cover and binding. Each subsequent sheet of paper, or every 2 pages, only adds $0.02 to the cost. (Before anyone looks this up, this isn’t 100% accurate a figure. There’s a lot of factors that will play into this, however my intention is to only be directionally accurate to illustrate a point.) Given the costs listed above, that means a two page book will cost $3.00, or $1.50 per page. A 202 page book (100 additional sheets over the base at two pages apiece) will cost $5.00, or $0.025 per page. The more pages, the closer it gets to that $0.02 per sheet cost.

Running with those costs above, to get a $1.00 profit over cost, ignoring ALL distribution or marketing expenses that might be needed to sell this, I would have to sell the first at $4.00 and the second at $6.00. A $2.00 difference for 200 pages. While the $4.00 price might be more appealing than the $6.00 price strictly by the number, when you see the difference in the product between the two, it makes sense.

Then digital ebooks came along and blew that whole thing out of the water.

Yet, it still stands mostly true for print.

In my thinking on building a writing career, as this essay is part, the thought of short stories often comes to mind. One, they are often quicker to produce than a novel. Two, they work on websites and a myriad of other places due to their shorter length. Who wants to read a whole novel on a webpage? OK, well, it might work as it’s similar to ebooks, but still.

Short stories are great too because they are fast reads. Look at the total lengths of most of Levar Burton Reads podcasts where he literally reads short stories: 40 minutes with introduction, ads, and closing remarks and credits all built in. In truth, most people can probably shave 15 minutes or more off that time were they to read it for themselves.

The problem with short stories always lands on print distribution. I get stuck there. While ebooks are great — I own a Kindle and a Nook, not to mention the apps for smartphones and tablets — there is something about reading a physical book I cannot get away from.

As of writing this, I have one short story available for sale as an ebook. It is not available in print, it is simply not long enough to make that selling price worth it for consumers (at least by my reckoning). And collections bother me as there is usually only one or two stories I want to buy/keep the book for. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the other stories in a collection, only that usually it is only one story I go back repeatedly to read.

Purchasing single short stories as ebooks is a fantastic way around this. Also, they can be kept at a low cost of $1.00 per story (or $0.99 if one wants to get technical), which is great for that inexpensive, quick read. But what about print?

Generally speaking, I am a big fan of the novella and novelette. Animal Farm, which clocks in at just under 30,000 words, is my favorite story and falls squarely into novella length. I think that more writers should operate in that range than appear to do so now. But still, that whole print pricing thing does come up as we approach the minimum length for a novel.

But that is a question on the logistics of book writing.

Here’s the question I really need to ask myself: does it really matter? Maybe.

The reminder that needs to remain in place is that being an independent writer with the technologies of today allow for things that before would have been cost-prohibitive in the past. Gates and barriers that were in place to attempt to preserve efficiencies do not matter as they did then. That is why the desire to go into a traditional publishing deal no longer appeals to me, if it ever really had. That’s even besides the terrible position authors are placed in with regard to ownership over their works. Independent ownership over the work also means that the choice can be made to proceed how one wishes to proceed in putting that work out there for the world to see.

But to print or not to print my short stories? I guess the real question becomes as to how long the stories are. Shorter lengths, like the 100-word stories I’ve been toying with of late, are almost a non-starter in that discussion. Honestly, any shorter than roughly 5,000 words might be too short to be marketable beyond the ebook market. That many words equates to only 15 to 20 pages at the 250-350 words-per-page average books work from. But for longer stories? 6,000+ words right through novelette and novella lengths should be prime, if I can do it right.

Another option was introduced by Hugh Howey (though I am not certain he was the originator) in having a “flip-book” style with two shorter length stories in print. That might work. Options abound.

Two stories are near ready for this experiment. This short story I mentioned above is one. I have another piece of speculative fiction that is the second. Print might work for both as individual stories, but maybe I might combine them into a dual/flip-book style, but keep them as individual ebooks. Who knows? The possibilities are endless.