Unabashed

Whatever happened to the novella as a form of prose? Many of the greatest stories of all time were written in the 20k - 50k word range. Stories like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and A River Runs Through It. There are countless others, but it seems the publishing world in general is intent on not publishing any novelettes or novellas. And this is particularly frustrating to me because all of my best work seems to be in novella word-count range.

I know: there’s no money in novellas for the publishing houses. If they can’t get 90k words or more they don’t want it. And short fiction had best not be written any longer than 5k if you want any decent shot at getting it out there. But there’s something about a thin book that I can carry comfortably in my back pocket and read in a couple of days that’s immensely appealing to me. But then the whole publishing industry seems to have veered starkly away from the middle class: there are the haves, of course, and the have nots, but there are rarely any have a littles or comfortably just getting bys. And of course this goes right back to the root of the publishing problem today: fewer and fewer people read any more. More and more it seems the only folks who read are those who are also either writers or who want to be. It seems to me a grand idea to put a wire rack back in the quick stop and stock it with pulp novellas, but then, I guess those would just sit there until the one or two of us who actually like to read them would buy them. Same goes for comic books. More and more, if you want a book, you have to visit Amazon or one of the huge booksellers, because the little bookstores are out of business now, and the selection at the drugstores and grocers are simply awful if you’re into anything other than romance.

I wish the novella format would make a return; just put them out there in pulp paperbacks and see if people won’t give them a try. I would, and that’s not just because I write them. Some of the best reads I’ve ever had were in novella format.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Fiction, novella, novellette, stories, writers, writing