Size (doesn't) Matter

Word count, page count...what makes a story, anyway?

Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author and a podcaster who is also a librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!

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I see a lot of writers anguishing over how long their work is—is it a novel? A series? A serial? A novella? What is the difference between a short story and a novella? What if it’s not long enough to be a book? How long is that, anyway?

Once again, I am here to explain that something you just took for granted about the publishing industry and writing in general is due to the history of text technology. Try to contain your excitement!

This time, obviously, I’m taking about word counts. Or, if you prefer, page counts.

We don’t use page counts much anymore as a gage for story length. At some point over the past 25 years, the standard drifted in accordance with the rise of word processing apps (which we used to call “software,” remember that? Ahahahha). As digital versions of stories became the norm, it did not matter quite so much how big an envelope you needed to buy in order to snail mail your story to an agent or magazine.

If you’re curious, though, just divide the total number of words by 250.

There is a reason that I know the general rule of thumb is “a page of text is 250 words,” and that is because I grew up before the era of personal computers and word processing software. In the USA, everything was calculated by letter-size page count, and word counts were approximate because of that. Submission requirements usually went by page counts, too. Sometimes both were listed (“5-10 pages, or approx. 1,250-2,500 words”) but writers weren’t counting words, we were counting pages. It’s one reason I think submission standards grew so strict over time, because just like undergrads who tried to stretch their page count by adding extra spaces or increasing the margin by an eighth of an inch (yes we did!), authors would put line spacing at 1.5 or decrease the margin by an eighth of an inch in order to get more words in under the page count.

Oh, those were the days!

Anyway, my point is: it’s all made up.

Mind you, this is not an exhortation to ignore submission guidelines! Don’t go around pissing off editors, my friends. That is not the way to make friends in this industry.

But what I am asking you to do is consider what format you are writing to, and more importantly, why.

Or as Becca Syme says: “question the premise.”

In the case of word counts, many writers fret and worry over how long or short their story is without stopping to consider why those standards exist, much less whether adhering to them is a sensible decision.

(Spoiler: sometimes yes, sometimes no!)

For instance, flash fiction was not really a thing when I was growing up. There were “super-short short stories” but most short fiction markets wanted 10-25 pages of fiction. When the internet started to come of age and stories could be just a single blog post (remember blogs?), 1,000 word stories suddenly became a lot more palatable.

Drabbles—stories of exactly 100 words—were incredibly popular on LiveJournal because you could create a series or a challenge in comment threads based on prompts. A 100 word comment is fun to write and easy to read, to the point where some drabble challenges expanded to threads multiple thousands of comments long. (No wonder LJ hated us!)

Which is to say, the technology influenced the form. Yes, you could write a 100 word drabble on your Smith Corona typewriter, but editing it and formatting meant typing it over and over again. And over again. Then, you were stuck with a drabble and nowhere to send it. No reasonable publication wanted stories of 100 words, unless they invited an already well respected author to do it on a lark. If you were in a metropolitan area with a strong literary community, someone might put together a ‘zine of super-short stories, but that was uncommon.

Another example are the books of the Bible (any bible, pick one). Those are not “books.” The longest books are more like novellas, clocking in at around 30,000 (English) words. The shorter ones are chapters, at best. But we call them books.

Why?

Because when they were written, they were books. Prior to the printing press, a book was incredibly expensive and time consuming to produce. Most were one-offs, or had maybe ten copies in circulation, which is why so few ancient books survived through the years. Paper, vellum, and parchment were expensive, as was any good ink. A book of 30,000 words was a hell of a large project to undertake, and anything larger than that needed to be broken up into volumes or risk it being too big to carry or hold.

So, okay, then where did the idea that a novel is over 60,000 words come from, you ask?

It goes back to the words-per-page factor, believe it or not.

A book of 60,000 words would be between 150-250 pages, depending on how small/tight the typesetting was for it. Even today, a book much larger than 250 pages is a challenge to print, usually requiring thinner paper than standard, and/or heavier binding. Bigger books cost more money to publish, and have a thinner profit margin.

To be clear, when I say “page count” what I mean is that it’s always all about the money.

Think of any massively popular book series from the past 50 years. Consider how the first book is usually the shortest—150 pages, maybe 200—then compare it to the last book in the series, which might be 500-800 pages. The first book was a risk, and likely was cut down to size by the editors to fit the print budget. The more popular the series got, the more profitable it became, resulting in a much higher publishing budget along with a much higher profit margin. It is fine to print an 800 page book when everyone and their cousin is willing to pay $$$ for the hardback.

Why does any of this history matter? Because I think it is important to know all of that when I tell you that it makes absolutely no difference how short or how long your story is.

I know authors making a living writing 20,000 word long insta-love romance stories. I know authors deep into their second or third 500,000 word-long fantasy epic series/serial. Drabbles, flash fic, short stories and novellas all have a place online now.

Text technology has shifted yet again, and as with the term “book,” our language cues have not caught up with those changes. There are still traditional outlets such as literary journals and trad book publications with the aforementioned submission guidelines, which you should respect. But you can post anything of any length on various platforms, up to and including your own website.

Don’t let definitions that have become arbitrary limitations constrain your creativity.

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