As we head into a new year and a new decade, let’s take a moment to consider the novella… These intermediaries between the disparate realms of the novel and the short story are experiencing a renaissance in the publishing world. But for readers and writers who are new to the medium, a brief look at the reviews for even popular, award-winning novellas reveal some common points of confusion over length, reader expectations, and classification, so let’s define our terms.
According to Hugo Award guidelines, a novella-length work is between 17,500 and 40,000 words, but the exact figures can fluctuate based on the market and genre. The best novellas are those that create immersive, impactful experiences by focusing on a particular element of character, plot, or theme and slowly teasing out the rest of the world. They often borrow an economy of language from short fiction. You’re unlikely to have pages upon pages devoted to the dinner menu or other inessential details, but a novella conveys the same information about the setting in a few sentences without sacrificing momentum or tone. They trust in your imagination to fill out the world of the story, to bring your curiosity to the table as you read.
With a good novella, I’m able to dip my toes into an adventure, especially when a busy schedule prevents me from dedicating time to longer works. Short stories pair well with your morning coffee; novels are best for long stretches of uninterrupted time on evenings or weekends. Novellas fit nicely into a tote bag for your commute and all those spare moments collected over the course of the day, but can also be finished in a couple hours for a satisfying and immersive reading experience.
When I was researching market opportunities in 2014 after finishing my first novella, I stumbled on a lot of advice similar to this 2008 Writer’s Digest piece advising novella writers to “stick it in a drawer” or pad it out to a full-length work. Despite the classics in the form—think Wells’ The Time Machine, Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Stephen King’s The Long Walk—traditional publishing opportunities have recently been limited to magazines, short fiction imprints, or collections by established authors. But novellas are now being actively solicited by all major publishers, and early adopters of the trend toward shorter works (including Tor.com) are leading the field with awards and accolades.
The novella’s comeback can be attributed to the emergence and increasingly popularity of e-books, print-on-demand publishing, and alternative distribution models, making them a more attractive, lucrative option in the digital age. There are rich opportunities here for both writers and readers of concise, efficient storytelling.
As a reader, I tend to favour smart books with quick pacing and dynamic characters. One of the most stunning novellas I’ve read this year is This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (published by Simon and Schuster), who play with an epistolary form in a work that offers delight and devastation in equal measure. (I’ve deleted the rest of this paragraph three times in an attempt to avoid spoilers, so just @ me if you want to discuss…) This book takes a high-concept approach to a familiar trope and makes it feel daring and new.
I also love Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti series, which likewise begins with two characters from very different worlds navigating a conflict with no apparent resolution. In the later books, we learn more about the impact of their choices on their worlds and the galaxy at large. Nnedi Okorafor summarized the series as “Girl leaves home. Girl comes home. Girl becomes home.” I really enjoyed the episodic narrative, and the way she expands the story and drives the plot forward without ever losing the focus on Binti herself.
Of course, action-packed stories are not all the medium has to offer: One of my local indie bookstores has an entire section devoted to “plotless fiction,” and novellas are an excellent medium to devote to exploring a specific character or situation without much narrative drive. Take Patrick Rothfuss’ The Slow Regard of Silent Things. Does it advance the plot of The Kingkiller Chronicle? Not really. But it is wonderful to spend quality time with one of the series’ most enigmatic characters, and to see the world through Auri’s perspective instead of Kvothe’s.
I also really enjoyed the thematic connections in Radicalized, a collection of four Black Mirror-esque novellas in which Cory Doctorow explores the technological and social disruption possibilities of the near future. Unauthorized Bread, for example, takes the act of jailbreaking a locked device, adds a measure of socio-economic disparity, and mixes in a healthy dose of anxiety over our reliance on proprietary tech. It’s a bite-sized tale that deftly weaves in an indelible teaching moment on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with more context and background than a short story and without the bloat of B-plots that might dilute its impact.
With their compact nature, novellas are also particularly well-suited to adaptation in other mediums. The hit series Killing Eve is based on a quartet of self-published e-books by Luke Jennings that were later collected into Codename Villanelle. The rise in professionalism and profitability for self-publishing has also increased the viability of novellas—they’re an excellent option in terms of experimenting with serialization, and can help emerging writers to develop their voice.
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The Stoaway Debutante
This year marks the fifth anniversary of my first novella, The Stowaway Debutante. I favoured the length because, as a new writer, I wanted to build up my confidence with a shorter format. (I also wanted my friends and family to actually read my work, and while they love me dearly, many would likely have balked at the prospect of a massive, George R.R. Martin-style wristcracker as my first book.)
As a writer, playing with the compact style of the novella helped me to focus my narrative into episodes of growth, and how that growth impacts the characters’ choices at the beginning and end of the series. I also wanted to pay tribute to the era of 25-cent pulp fiction paperbacks, writing Clara, my protagonist, into all kinds of uncanny scenarios and wild adventures (except, you know, as the active heroine instead of the love interest).
As the last few years have clearly shown, there is a market for this type of intermediate narrative, which arguably fills an underserved gap in literary preferences for character studies and tightly-plotted storylines. In an era of infinite content and fractured attention spans, where creators need to build trust with their audience in exchange for the investment of their valuable energy and time, novellas are compelling, easily consumable, and reflect a certain awareness of their readers’ busy lives.
So, readers, fear not: these slim additions to your TBR piles offer a lot of fascinating mileage in a deceptively small package. And writers, it’s time to brush off your trunk manuscripts and prepare for edits! The novella isn’t just back for the moment—it’s here to stay.
Rebecca Diem is an author and poet of smart, hopeful speculative fiction. Her work includes the steampunk novella series Tales of the Captain Duke. Rebecca now calls Toronto home and is on a never-ending quest to find the perfect café and writing spot. You can follow her adventures on Instagram or Twitter or visit her website for more stories.
Novellas can have a nice price point for ebooks and audiobooks. While I prefer longer books, it’s easier to justify taking a chance on a novella instead of a full-up novel.
I was raised on Ace Doubles.
If it’s 128 pages it’s a novel……
Not me, I hate the age of the standalone novella. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten excited about a description then found out it was a novella and instantly lost 95% of my interest. Virtually every time I HAVE read one of these novellas, the best reaction I’ve been able to give is either “I liked it a lot, but I wish it was a novel” or “If you packaged several of these in a book I’d happily buy it but it’s not worth it to me by itself” (and often both reactions at once).
I’m with ghostly1, honestly. This Is How You Lose the Time War is $20 and it’s just 200 pp. We’re not all Kindle readers.
I loved Slow Regard of Silent Things, even though it did not advance the plot. Another of my favorite SF authors has been releasing novellas/novelettes as a way to provide the readers with plot tangents and character development for pieces of the universe that don’t fit into the plot of a novel. In this sense, I like the idea—even though I’m one of those that would rather see longer works. Besides, without the novella, we might never have met Murderbot.
ghostly1, there is a Binti collection of the novellas in one volume (including a new story). That’s how I read them and I appreciated having the different episodes of her adventures (so far) all together. I agree the price for physical novellas is often quite high, considering the page count.
@2 Soul sibling!
I love novellas. I adore short stories and novelettes. I’m also quite fond of kitten-squishers now that I have a Kindle (three, to be precise, for different occasions). Whatever the ills Ammy and Bezos hath wrought, the ereader revolution has made my personal reading life so much more accessible.
On one hand, neither Time War nor Greg Egan’s Perihelion Summer would work at novel length. On the other, it is ridiculous to charge novel prices for the print versions.
Had it not been for Tor.com’s novella revolution, as I prefer to think of it, I’d possibly never have encountered the dazzling work of Kai Ashante Wilson. As a gay black non-binary reader, discovering both that incredible cover for “Sorcerer of the Wildeeps” and that the hunk on that cover is a badass gay black demigod wizard at the center of literally the BEST fantasy story I’ve ever encountered (with perhaps the exception of Wilson’s short story “Super Bass”) chemically altered everything I thought I knew or could know about this genre I’ve called home since 8 y.o., when I first picked up a library copy of The Hobbit.
While I wholly understand the sff reader’s preference for novel length work, I couldn’t be more grateful for Tor.com and the incredible wave of novellas they’ve produced that have done the indelible work of giving marginalized as well as non-marginalized readers a new perspective of this hugely (still) untapped homeland.
The first time I’ve consciously encountered novellas (apart from the horrible stuff I was forced to read in school) was Stephen King’s collection of four novellas “Different Seasons” which contains the absolutely amazing work “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”.
Personally, I think a story should be told in the corresponding number of pages. I neither want it to be artificially blown up just to meet the necessary page count for a novel, nor do I want it to be cut down to fit a short length. If the story “wants to be” a novella, then a novella it should be.
However, I second the feeling that it’s ridiculous of publishers to sell novellas for the same price as novels. I feel ripped off – or rather I would feel ripped off as I don’t buy novellas at this price since sooner or later they usually appear with other works in a more voluminous book.
I think publishers do themselves a disfavor with this pricing policy.
I’ve heard it say that novellas don’t sell well. Maybe they would sell a lot better if they were reasonably priced.
Publishers – and yes, that does include you, Tor!* – should rethink their strategy. It might win them customers. Or at least not piss them off.
* “Binti”, 96 pages long, selling for $6.98 at Amazon???
The Murderbot novellas are awesome. They are a perfect length without sacrificing character development or story. I’m looking forward to the full-length novel, but certainly wouldn’t mind more novellas.
I tried to get into the Binti series, but didn’t enjoy the first novella. I also wasn’t a fan of This is How You Lose the Time War.
I have read many novels that were expanded from shorter works, including novellas and novelettes. And in most cases, I prefer the original version. There is power in brevity.
I’ve always thought of E.M. Forster’s “THE MACHINE STOPS” — at about 13,000 words — as a novella, and one of my favorite science fiction works ever. Nowadays it might be considered a short story. No matter, such a wonderful work.
-Carl Kruse
Like @2, I grew up on Ace Doubles.
I’ve always loved the novella length. I think PS Publications deserves a lot of credit for launching the current revival of novellas. I’ve been buying from them (despite having to pay trans-Atlantic postage) since 1999 with Kim Newman’s Andy Warhol’s Dracula & Graham Joyce’s Leningrad Nights. I’m not a fast reader because I read for prose style above all else, and I like to savor good prose.
Novellas are a great way to get the flavor of a writer’s prose without committing to a novel (or, gawd help us, a trilogy). I discovered Eric Brown when I bought the PS edition of Starship Summer, not knowing that it would be expanded into a series, and have been a fan ever since. PS has published some terrific Matthew Hughes novellas in his Archonate universe. In addition to the 2 novels (Chaga & Kirinya), Ian McDonald wrote a novella in the Chaga series called Tendeléo’s Story that I bought from PS in 2000, although it’s been in a lot of Best of anthologies, including Best of Ian McDonald from PS.
NewCon Press has also done some great work with the form, including Eric Brown’s Starship Fall (the 2nd in the sequence, which PS did include in the collection Starship Seasons) & novellas by Dave Hutchinson, Ian Watson, Liz Williams, Tony Ballantine, Tanith Lee, Adam Roberts and others.
It isn’t necessary to point out the great work Tor has done with the form, because everyone reading this blog knows that already. @11, I also loved the Murderbot novellas. They were so perfect that I’m awaiting the novel with no little trepidation because the shorter length just may have been the perfect length for those stories.
Even with novels, I’m happiest at a 300 to 400 page length. All too often, doorstoppers feel bloated, as if they were stretched to meet market demand. There are exceptions, obviously. Connie Willis’s Blackout/All Clear reads like one huge novel published in 2 parts because it was just TOO big. I waited until All Clear came out and read them continuously as one book, and there wasn’t a word that felt unnecessary. But, that’s pretty rare.
As a writer of novels, novellas offer an interesting option: Getting work to market more quickly, understanding how it does (or doesn’t) resonate with the market, and then continuing a story in more digestible chunks, with the option to bundle the novellas together later. This is particularly curiosity-piquing in the face of pricing and price-sensitivity, where you’re often confronted with the need to price lower until you’ve hit name recognition, at which point you may be competing with novella authors who have large catalogs (and can use price promotion tools to sell a first in a series at a loss and sell in to future volumes). Hard to find a downside to being able to produce work more quickly at similar-ish price points. I do agree with other commenters who said the $20 price for a print novella is ridiculous.
I’m not sure how I feel about it as a reader, but now that I’m nearing 40 I wonder how much of that is because of how I’ve consumed books all my life. Stepping back and thinking about readers as a whole (with a focus on younger readers), there are A LOT of things competing for entertainment minutes today. Being able to finish something relatively quickly–and being able to say you liked/disliked it–is valuable.
I may have to give novellas a shot.
@16. michael: “I do agree with other commenters who said the $20 price for a print novella is ridiculous.”
That’s nothing on Subterranean Press, which used to charge $35 for a novella (don’t know if they still do). I haven’t picked up one of their books since I got a copy of an Alastair Reynolds novella that was full of copyediting problems in the first few pages. I thought: “OK, this is the only way I can read this at the moment, I’m a Reynolds fan, you guys are charging gouging prices and can’t even deliver clean copy?” Ugh.
Overpricing may end up killing this new novella market if publishers get too greedy.
Connie Willis wrote a slew of great novellas that had been published separately. My favorite is “Bellwether.” Her collected short stories have more novellas than not. Gene Wolfe includes at least a few novellas in each of his story collections, including “Forlesen” in “Gene Wolfe’s Book of Days,” and a half-dozen brilliant examples in “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories, and Other Stories.” He wrote a trilogy of novellas published as “The Fifth Head of Cerberus.” Isaac Asimov published eight novellas as “The Foundation Trilogy.” Phillip K Dick wrote dozens of novellas; so did Harlan Ellison. One can be a science fiction reader and read nothing but. I think you CAN’T be a science fiction reader without reading novellas. How can you not read Murderbot, for example?
@18. Dmitry: ” How can you not read Murderbot, for example?”
I agree with you, but some dismiss the series as unrelatable unless you’re an introvert.
Novellas are good for exploring new ideas and characters that I wouldn’t necessarily want to spend 500 pages reading– like striking up a fascinating conversation with someone interesting at the deli, but not having to spend a whole week’s vacation with them.
Novellas, like comics, are also just great for switching it up and getting some variety: One novella will differ vastly from another in voice and content, and the length lends itself to a different tone than the wrist-cracker (ha) epics and typical-length novels. I always like to season my year with a few. Some of my favorites have been Tesh’s Silver in the Wood (immediately read it a second time upon finishing), This Is How You Lose the Time War (same!), Thompson’s The Murders of Molly Southbourne, and Cornell’s Witches of Lychford. I’m so glad Tor has been expanding this field by publishing them.
Aqueduct Press regularly publishes speculative fiction novellas (and its slimmer fiction collections) in its Conversation Pieces line, which debuted in the early 2000s.
CP prices typically run $5.95/eBook and $12/physical book. I can understand why people might balk at the prices, though as a small press, Aqueduct is not exactly making a mint on them. Sometimes they discount books sold through their webpage.
(Disclosure: I have 3 novellas published or forthcoming in the CP line.)
I love the Murderbot novellas, but I’m not paying $10 each for them on Kindle.
As I reflect on this, I might suggest that we are actually in a Silver Age of novellas. The form was common back in the Golden Age of SF, back when magazines dominated the genre. What we are seeing now is a resurgence of the old form.
I don’t buy individual novellas because there isn’t enough bang for the buck.
For example, Bujold’s Penric’s Demon sells for $17.63.
I do buy them in a collection or anthology that offers good value.
For example, Penric’s Progress is a hardcover containing Penric’s Demon, Penric and the Shaman, and Penric’s Fox. That book sells for $17.59.
As a writer, my shoe is on the other foot. I write science fiction but have come to realise that I write short reads, not by choice, but unconsciously. When I start writing, I have no set word count in mind as a target, but let the story develop organically. The story will be as long as it need be to tell the tale – no longer, no shorter – as I refuse to pad out my books to meet an arbitrary word count, feeling that to do so would be disingenuous and disrespectful to both the reader and the story itself.
Most of my work tends to be around the 40,000 word mark and my longest book is around 60,000 words. However, there are two trilogies included in my catalogue and the books that form those trilogies are also published in omnibus editions whose lengths would satisfy the consumer of longer reads.
As a reader, I have no real preference but, as a writer, I am inherently drawn to writing short reads. And I’m fine with that.