I'm probably going to regret kicking this beehive...

[julesjones]

Today's post at Romancing the Blog, "The Proflicacy Problem", discusses the high output of some romance writers, and questions whether they can keep up the quality of their work when putting out finished work at the sort of speed being displayed by some. Now, I wouldn't completely disagree with the sentiment expressed, but something struck me as I read the article and the comment thread. Most of the people involved seemed to be measuring output purely in terms of titles per year. To which I went, "Huh?"

I think of output at least as much in terms of word count as in number of titles. That's partly a reflection of my being a writer, and therefore having a very strong interest in word counts, and how well the word count in my manuscript matches up to the word count in the submission guidelines. But it's also something I did even when my interest in books was purely as a reader. You can do a lot of fiddling with the words per page, but even so, it's pretty obvious that (picking a couple of examples from the bookcase next to me) Tanith Lee's Kill the Dead and Mary Gentle's 1610: A Sundial in a Grave have somewhat different word counts. And both are the length they need to be for the story contained therein.

I could start a long and entertaining flame war by enquiring whether length is of itself an indicator of quality, with reference to Extruded Fantasy Product; the death of the novella; and what happens when a market decides at two minutes' notice that it wants sleek 100 kword novels instead of doorstops, and that includes anything turned in but not actually in the printing press at this very moment. However, I know someone with far more experience of kicking beehives, and I'll leave that one to him. I'm more interested in this one:

If four writers each produce 200,000 words of finished book product per year, who has the highest production rate -- the one turning out one EFP doorstop, the one turning out two of "standard length for first sf novel", the one turning out three category romances, or the one turning out several novellas?

Now, I have a personal interest in this, because I'm actually named in that comment thread as an example of a fast but good writer. Which boggled me slightly, because while I'm pleased enough with the compliment and the free publicity, I am not what I think of as a fast writer. I'm actually a pretty slow writer compared with some of my friends.

But I'm also a natural novella writer, and I've managed to get two to three titles a year out by dint of writing things that are only 25-50 kwords long. And since I'm epublished, it's a lot less obvious that the books are quite short. That's a large part of why I'm epublished, in fact -- as far as sf genre markets are concerned, my natural length is too long for the print magazine market and too short for the print novel market. So presumably people are seeing the title count, and not realising that much of the time the combined length is about the same as or even less than a single title from one of the people whose natural length is doorstop.

So is an emphasis on word count vs title count a difference between the sf and romance genres, or is it a difference between writers and readers? Or perhaps it's both, because as has been discussed repeatedly and noisily of late, it's not easy to draw a solid line between pro and fan in the sf genre.

Any thoughts?

Comments

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Between author and reader, I think, because you're so absolutely right, but I didn't think that way at all. I was thinking titles. Wow. Total brain shift.

Oh, and did you see this: Another mention of you. Hope you don't mind.

[julesjones]

So I wasn't just imagining it when I thought that people were thinking in terms of titles and not actual wordage. :-)

Hadn't checked TMT today (which will get a link in the sidebar as soon as I can work out how to put more than 10 urls there). No, don't mind at all. That's the public website, so anything on it's fair game for linkage, including the essays (though please warn me if you feel a sudden urge to use me as an example of someone who has written explicitly Christian m/m, or other topics likely to cause a sudden uproar in my LJ:-).

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

HAVE you written explicitly (harhar) Christian m/m?! The mind boggleth.

[julesjones]

The third volume of The Syndicate is all about the lead up to the wedding, and the wedding itself. Which is in an Anglican church. There is angst because Vaughan does not want to tell his Welsh Methodist parents that he's getting married in an Anglican church. There is angst because Allard is worried that having a bunch of teetotallers looking disapprovingly at the booze is going to make *his* family feel uncomfortable at the reception. There is no mention at all of possible trouble over it being two men getting married. This was deliberate.

We did get a little bit worried about whether American readers would
a) be offended by the religious jokes
b) *understand* the religious jokes...

And of course, since we wrote it, the Anglican community has been tying itself in knots because the Epsicopalians decided that cherrypicking Leviticus in order to ignore the Second Great Commandment was a Bad Thing, and it's more important whether someone makes a good bishop then whether he's straight.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

However, I know someone with far more experience of kicking beehives, and I'll leave that one to him. I'm more interested in this one:

Why are my ears burning?

(Goes back to "One publisher's explanation for why writers don't need agents _or_ 'Honest, I had a vasectomy'" and "Am I doomed to an eternity of SF stories that use Everett's Many Worlds model? Yes, but only in a small fraction of the possible timelines."

[julesjones]

I only take lessons from the best.

I *like* the first one. Are you going to post it in your LJ? (No, I'm still not going to read rasfw. Shan't. You can't make me.)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I'm still dithering over whether I should use "Honest, I'll tap your head first."

There is just the slightest problem that one well-known publisher's founder prefered a more, hrm, familial relationship with writers* over professional ones and I am not sure how vindictive the new owners might be.

* Down to the "this week, *you* are the prettiest child," method of paying monies owed. Nothing like the Bad Martin (Not H) Greenberg**, mind you.

[julesjones]

You forgot your second footnote, and yes, that might be a problem. Even if you *weren't* intending a very specific target, it would be read as such.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

** I think this was going to about how if you weren't going to tell an author that you sold his book to the SFBC, you should make sure the editor at the SFBC isn't also the author's editor at another imprint. At one point Bad Martin neglected to tell Asimov about an SFBC sale Gnome Press made but since Bradbury was Asimov's editor at Doubleday and almost certainly the lost editor of the SFBC, Asimov heard about it right away.

There's another Martin Greenberg, who uses the name Martin H. Greenberg, and he's not the same as Bad Martin.

I could use the famous example of how in olden days, it wasn't unheard of for two halves of the same (well known publisher) double to have different sales rates but I think a lot of the credit for cleaning those habits goes to the SFWA.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

that might be a problem.

There's a question someone asked me on LJ that I cannot answer, because the answer is in the form of a naptha-soaked bridge.

[julesjones]

If you're referring to what I think you're referring to, I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. In fact, I think I'm going to resist any temptation to join in that thread.

I'm in a slightly odd position because I do not have an agent and am not likely to get one until such time as my writing taste coincides with what is sellable to an advance-paying publisher. On the other hand, I *do* have a friend-of-a-friend who is a well-known sf agent, who was willing to check over a contract for Really Bad Ideas for me on a flat fee basis. This is not normal and I don't usually talk about it in public lest it encourage baby writers to think that it *is* normal.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

If you're referring to what I think you're referring to, I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole.

Oh, probably not. Email me at jdnicoll at panix.com if you want to know.

[samcdermott65.livejournal.com]

Hi Jules. As you know, I am a reader. And as a reader I always looked at number of titles being published. Over the last few months since I've joined LJ and other chats and gotten to know authors, it's more the word count than the number of titles produced. I know, multiple titles look good to the public, but most are as you indicated, pretty short. It's word count that matters overall. Just my two cents.

shari

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

But each story requires its own plot and characters and so on.

[samcdermott65.livejournal.com]

That is very true and some authors are very good at creating them in abundance. Some authors are better at writing many shorter stories and others are better at creating fewer but longer ones. Authors certainly seem to concentrate on that word count though... Epublishers certainly emphasize word count.

shari

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Authors certainly seem to concentrate on that word count though...

This depends a little on genre: in 2003, science fiction (but not fantasy) over 120K words became unsellable to mainstream publishers, because the book stores said that long SF didn't sell well enough to bother carrying.

This lead to things like authors being told "That monster MS you just handed in? We kinda need it either trimmed to 120 K or cut into two halves, each of which work as stories, by, oh, when I finish this coffee."

[samcdermott65.livejournal.com]

That would really suck. Not being able to sell a story because of the word count and not because of the quality of the work. Good quality work should be sellable. But the opportunity to break it into two books would be good. Same word count, two books... Here we go with that multiple titles thing again... There's no right or wrong in it. I guess it would depend on demand and the author's writing styles.

shari

[julesjones]

Interesting to see that as a reader gets to see a bit more inside the process, the emphasis can shift. This is why I was wondering if there was a difference between genres, because in sf there has always been a huge amount of interaction between writers and readers, and a lot of overlap between the two groups, long before the internet. I don't know enough about romance from the inside to know if it's the same there.

As James has explained, the stuff I referred to in the third paragraph has actually happened, and to some of our mutual friends. Two more of the books sitting on the bookcase next to me were a single manuscript when handed in. The author had to split it into two, and not just parts one and two, but two separate novels, at very short notice. So we know that often number of titles doesn't actually have much to do with the author...

[horace-hamster.livejournal.com]

As we all know, getting published depends on luck to a greater or lesser degree. Some novelists sell their first book on their first submission; others are followed around by a black cloud and keep almost-but-just-missing that big break-in sale for years and years. The latter type may have three or seven or twelve novels sitting unsold at the time they finally get offered their first contract -- and the large majority of those books may be just as good as the one they sold. There's no way for readers, or perhaps even for editors/publishers, to know whether each new novel by an author is a recently-penned piece or something rescued from the back of the hard drive.

[julesjones]

Quite -- I know of several episodes where the third book sold was the first one written, and I'm sure there are lots more cases.

There is also the phenomenon of being initially published by a very small press, and then having the book reprinted by another house where it gets wider exposure. This is something that happened to me -- people look at the number of books I have out from Loose Id, and forget that the first two had been published a couple of years earlier by a now-vanished micropress.