ideal book length - Sacha T. Y. Fortuné

Tag: ideal book length

Hart & Cole Series

Book Baby’s Makeover

/

I’ve been a published writer for 2+ years now.

I can’t believe it. Yup, my first book baby turned 2 years old recently, on July 28th.

In all fairness, I was hard-core for about 9 months after publishing, and then my zeal quickly tapered off when other life things took priority. So there’s been a long gap of doing very, very little writer-wise.

It took me awhile to get back to a project I had promised myself to do: editing and re-publishing Book 1 of my series, this time with a better plan for the re-release.

Why edit a book already published?

Well, for one thing, I didn’t become an overnight success with such an unwieldy tome.

Of course, publishing a novelette wouldn’t guarantee any more success, but I know that the size was off-putting to some readers — particularly book bloggers who have far too much on their plate to put that kind of faith in a new writer.

I’ve learnt so much since then, and grown so much as a writer even though I was “dormant” for part of the time.

I also read a lot, and found that there’s a sweet spot with reading — you want a book that feels like a full story, but doesn’t take over your entire life.

What’s new with this version?

Honestly, nothing fundamental.

You’d think that cutting from 555 pages to 385 pages (170 pages) would change the entire direction of the story, since that length of the difference is more than some people write for an entire book!

But… no.

That’s the beauty of editing. If you’re really, really, good at it, it can be seamless enough so that it’s barely noticeable.

I’m a good editor. Scratch that. I’m a flipping fantastic editor.

Problem is: you should NEVER edit yourself. I know this, though I did it again anyway.

Maybe I’m a different person two years later, though. Certainly, reading it over two years later, I saw a lot of things that irked me because they could have been so less verbose.

What was my process?

First, I evened it out a bit. I collapsed chapters into each other that seemed natural to fit together, and then looked for super long ones and cut those.

I got rid of a lot of white space, knowing that my “first pass” would look tight and busy, but then I could keep cutting a line here or there in the final edit.

I just finished this “first pass” a couple days ago, so I still have more editing to do so that chapters don’t end without sufficient breathing room.

Layout is a slippery beast — you want to be on top of that.

And I write a lot of dialogue, so that’s what I cut. A LOT of it. Entire scenes of it. Or huge chunks of it. From everywhere. I gave myself rules as I went along, like:

  • Every paragraph on this page has to be one line less
  • Every chapter ending with a half-page or quarter-page has to get rid of that extra bit
  • Every chapter beyond 15 pages has to lose a page

…and so on.

If you’re disciplined like that, you’ll get there eventually.

How long did it take?

It took me a few weeks altogether. I started when I was on my super-megatrip cruise vacation in April-May 2019, where I had loads of free time with long sea days across the Atlantic, so I managed to ditch the bulk of it at 80-100 pages.

Then a trickle here and there where I ditched a page here and a page there over the course of several months (pregnancy and a new baby is a fabulous excuse for procrastinating!), and then finally a last burst of a push from 411 to 385 in the last few weeks since I moved out from where I was living and into my new home where I finally have the mental peace to focus on writing again.

So… yeah. It’s been QUITE the journey, but I’m here.

My 555 debut book monstrosity is now slim and sexy and a measly 385 pages long.

Why 385, you ask?

Well, because that was the number I had settled on for my other two books — Pandora’s Poison and Pandora’s Price. At the time, I kept those two at the exact page count because it is meant to be a 2-part read. So it seemed like a good number to aim for with Book 1 as well.

Plus, 385 is that aforementioned “sweet spot” for me.

What’s next?

Now that I’ve hit my desired page count, it’s not over just yet. Here’s what still lies ahead:

PRINT VERSION CLEANUP

I still have some more tightening to do to free up some white space for the print version. I ideally like my chapters to have at least a half or quarter page of breathing room in between. So there’s still quite a few lines to cut.

E-VERSION EDIT

Once I’m properly there with the print version, I have to set everything up for the e-version. This is time-consuming and painstaking. I just hope I’ve remembered the steps to link the chapters and add the cover and a million more things.

GET MY NEW COVER DONE

I just commissioned it a couple of days ago. I’m so excited. I’m using a similar image (same woman, same photoshoot) but adding some elements to show what the story is about.

GET MY NEW ISBN

You need this once you significantly edit a book’s page count. I requested this yesterday and should get it by next week. Whoop.

GET AMAZON TO TRANSFER MY REVIEWS

Gosh, I hope they do. It would be a shame to lose them. I hope my edit still counts as the same book, to them. It would be painful to start from scratch.

REMOVE MY OLD BOOK BABY

Sayonara, sucker. Your new version is slimmer and sexier now.

MARKET MY REVISED BOOK BABY

Yeah, I’m not looking forward to this. This is the absolute worst part.

LAUNCH

Currently targeting January 1st, so I have a few months to plan properly.

MARKET, MARKET, MARKET

Sigh. Yeah. Did I mention I hate this part?

Related posts:

Comments Off
View Post
Hart & Cole Series

The Post-Publish Big Chop: Should I Fix My Fat Book Baby?

/

Now that my third book is LIVE, I can take a little time to reflect on the journey thus far.

In my launch day post for “Book 2: Pandora’s Poison”, I mentioned that I’d learnt a lot since becoming a published writer, and the book length issue was a huge part of what I’d learnt.

It continues to plague me to this day…

Back to the Beginning…

Usually, once readers start in on the book, it doesn’t feel nearly as long as it really is. There is a lot — a LOT — of dialogue, so it’s easy to flip through scenes.

I know my writing style is on point when it comes to DIALOGUE. My characters feel real because of it. And there’s a lot of it, so it helps you to dive right in.

The problem is, when you’re a reader used to 200-300 page books, and you see a new author clocking in at 500+………. yeah, it’s a hard sell.

While I think my story is worth the long read, and most readers did enjoy it, quite a few harped on the length.

Some said they read every word, some said it discouraged them at first but then they didn’t care, some said it was long but kept their interest throughout, and there was the odd one or two that mentioned skipping ahead or that marked it down primarily for that, calling it “long-winded” despite being such a good story.

But even my amazing blogger who gave it a fabulous, thoughtful review (and who eventually ended up doing an Author Q&A with me because she loved the book so much)… well, even she mentioned, in a nutshell:

“Fabulous story, but it just takes so long to get there!”

The thing was… whether in a good or bad light… it was MENTIONED. It was a TOPIC. And THAT might be the issue here.

I’d love to ignore it and hope I’m one day famous enough to not care. After all, Stephen King can afford to suck his teeth at short-attention-span readers, but even he noted that he went way overboard at times and lamented some of his longer works as he grew as a writer.

You see, sometimes… you’ve just got to kill those darlings!

Length as a Hindrance for Reader Interest

The problem is getting readers in the first place.

My book is already outside the genre norms as my characters aren’t “heroes and heroines” — fair enough. So, adding a super-long length on top of that… yeah, I’m just asking for trouble.

I recently ran a couple of marketing promo services and realised that bloggers preferred to simply promo the book rather than write a review… probably because of the length. So it feels like an uphill battle.

The thing is, I believe in the core of my soul that “published” means “published” and despite the ABILITY to do so, there’s only a small margin of what you really should “edit” once you hit that button.

So I’m still on the fence about cutting down Book 1.

It took me awhile to decide to “cut” my story into Books 2 & 3 and do some rewriting, but at least those weren’t published yet. Making a major change (like cutting 150 pages!) will require a LOT more effort.

I also have to consider what it would mean for future stories — as Book 1 had loads of minor characters with back stories since I knew I had plans for them later on. Sigh.

I don’t know if I have what it takes to “slim down” my first fat book baby. I’m glad that it is POSSIBLE, since I’m a self-published writer. And I know other indies do this ALL THE TIME.

But… still… sigh.

I guess part of it feels like… I’m a bit of a failure, if I have to go backwards and “FIX” my debut.

But… is taking this hit to my ego worth it, in the long run?

Planning for the long (book) trip

I myself don’t always look at book length before diving in. Most times, I just start reading and stop if my interest wanes. Usually, by 10% of whatever the length is, I’ll know.

But readers don’t all think like me. And some are voracious readers and have a very specific idea of what they’re looking for in a book.

Maybe I can’t hit ALL of their “wish list” items, but length can be a deterrent from the jump.

I guess it’s a little like thinking about planning a trip to Australia.

It looks great, I’m sure it’s great. Everyone who went tells me it’ll be great. But it’ll take me over an entire day to get there. So… I haven’t gone yet.

It’s not that I’ll NEVER go. I still WANT to go. I just don’t know when I’ll be prepared to make the trip. And in the meanwhile, I’m popping over to everywhere that’ll take me 12 hours or less…

And, if I’ve ALREADY gone to Australia or somewhere nearby (i.e. read another book by the same author) and I’m familiar with the journey, I’ll settle in and enjoy the 24+ hour trip, as I know exactly what’s coming.

Maybe I’m waffling on about “journeying” because my vacation is coming up and I’m excited! 🙂 But… well, you get the point.

A book is a journey. An unknown author is an unknown destination. So if the destination seems too far in the distance…

Yeah. You see where I’m going with this.

Going backward to go forward

If it were a single one-off standalone, then I would be more comfortable just leaving it in its chubby unwieldiness.

But I’m writing a SERIES. And while you CAN go straight to Book 2, I don’t recommend it.

Most readers will want to start at Book 1. Yep: the fat book baby.

So if it’s an issue that’s going to plague me and all future books in the series… yeah. I have to give it some serious thought.

In the meanwhile, I’ll hold off on promo-ing Book 1 again until I’ve made a decision either way… but in the meanwhile…

Sigh.

A book isn’t a piece of software. I shouldn’t need to do “patches”. It’s a piece of art. It should exist, intact, once revealed to the public.

And I’m an overachiever perfectionist. I don’t do “failure” well. And going back feels like failure. Republishing feels like failure. Needing to have a “Version 2” feels like failure.

But is “failure” worth it, to succeed in the long run?

Can “going back” help me to “go forward”?…

Related posts:

Comments Off
View Post