Very Long Books

I seem--for obvious reasons [g]--to have become the Patron Saint of People With Very Long Manuscripts. Or at least, the person to whom people with very long manuscripts write for excuse and validation and assurances that yes, you can too sell an enormous long book, just look at Diana Gabaldon!

That being so, I thought perhaps I should say a few things about Very Long Books, and just what the odds may be of selling such a thing in today's publishing climate. In a word...low.

Look, at the simplest level, long books cost a lot of money to produce. In addition to requiring a ton (multiple tons) of paper, with increasing paper costs, they also cost more to edit, to copy-edit, to print, to ship, and to store.

In addition to increased costs, abnormally long books are simply more difficult to sell, at the end-user level. This is how it works: see, when you go to the grocery store or drugstore and look at the book sections, you see racks with "pockets," into which the books fit. Now, these pockets are not filled by the store personnel--your grocery store does not keep stacks of paperbacks in the backroom, in order to zip out and refill the racks.

Paperbacks (and magazines) are put into these stores by wholesale distributors--companies whose business it is to service the book-sections of multi-use stores (not including Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target--these stores do have their own book-buyers, for the most part).

OK. A wholesale distributor sends out squads of truck drivers from their own warehouse, with trays full of books, which are used to fill the pockets at grocery stores and drugstores (the books are collected into the trays before leaving the warehouse, according to the "formula" set for the stores being serviced: most stores will get X copies of the bestsellers from whatever list the wholesaler uses, and then so-many romances, so-many mysteries, etc. from the "midlist"--the books that are not bestsellers but are currently available.).

Now, a truck-driver from the wholesale distributor will visit each store on his/her route on a regular schedule; a grocery store with high turnover might be serviced once a week, while one with less traffic might get a visit once a month. The shops in airports, which have immense turnover, are often visited as often as every four hours (!).

On such a visit, the wholesaler will check the pockets to see what's selling, and refill empty ones, take away books that seem not to be selling, and replace them with new titles.

So--say that a wholesaler who visits a given store once a month has a choice between stocking Like Water for Chocolate, or Voyager. You can fit two copies of Voyager into a pocket, or eight copies of Like Water for Chocolate. What you you think the wholesaler will pick, knowing that once the two copies of Voyager are gone, the pocket will sit empty until the next visit? Yeah, that's right.

I've been very lucky, and my books do sell pretty well. Even so, my paperback sales are a lot less, proportionately speaking, than those of smaller-book authors, because my books don't show up in the wholesale outlets (grocery/drugstores) much, except when they're first released--at that point, they're generally bestsellers (thank you, God [g]), and the wholesalers are required to put them in stores. After they drop off the current bestseller list, though, wholesalers would much rather put out smaller books, on which they'll make a higher profit.

The long-book problem is much less acute in bookstore venues, but even there--long books do take up more shelf-space, and therefore a store will not stock as many long books as they will short books, proportionately speaking. And if readers don't see your books on the shelves, they can't buy them.

Publishers know all this. Ergo, if faced with a choice between a Very Long Manuscript, and one that's about the usual length for a single-title book* (i.e., somewhere between 90,000-120,000 words)...well, the Very Long one had better be pretty dang good, in order to justify the certainty of high production costs and the possibility of lowered sales.

So yes, you can sell a long book, if it's a really terrific story. There are one or two or three marvelous long books every year that become "big," and there are certainly plenty of readers who love books big enough to move into and live for a week or so. [g] (There are also readers who are intimidated by long books, and
won't even pick one up.) But if you have any kind of choice about it (and I realize that you may not)--you have much better odds of selling a shorter manuscript.

Very Odd Books

“Dear Ms. Gabaldon,

I am writing a book that doesn't really fit into any genre, but contains elements of romance/suspense/mystery
(fantasy/mystery/romance, women's fiction/history/suspense, thriller/romance/science fiction, etc./etc./etc.). The manuscript is presently about 320,000 words, though I am not yet finished. I have heard that agents and editors are wary of long manuscripts; should I mention the length in my query letter?”

In a word...no. See above. [g]

I personally would also not admit upfront that I had a book that “doesn't really fit...”.

Now think about this: when you walk into a bookstore, do you see shelves labeled “women's fiction/history/suspense, maybe a little allegory with a dash of sex”?

No. You see “Mystery.” “Fantasy and Science Fiction” (they put those together in many stores, only because there's sufficient overlap--and the niche is small enough--that it isn't worthwhile trying to figure out which is which, for an individual book.). “Romance.”“History.”“Westerns.” Etc., etc.

Book publishing is largely a matter of labels. See, this is how it works: publishing companies have sales representatives (“sales reps”), whose job it is to visit bookselling accounts every month or so, to acquaint the booksellers with the new titles about to come out, and encourage them to order the new books.

Now, plainly, the sales reps can't be reading every new title they get (though most sales reps do read an astonishing amount), and the booksellers generally have not read most of the new titles ahead of time (though publishing companies do send out ARC's (Advanced Reading Copies, also known as “bound galleys”--these are just the typeset galley-proofs of a book, cheaply bound in a paper cover) of titles that they want to push).

Ergo, most of the “selling” involves the sales reps’ description of the book to the bookseller. And remember that the sales rep is describing a lot of different books at once. This means that your book is going to need to be described very briefly and cogently, in order to make an impression on the bookseller who may want to order it.

Booksellers naturally realize that their stores are organized according to genre labels. [g] Therefore, they're going to be less enthusiastic about a book that can't be easily shelved or hand-sold (i.e., recommended to a customer looking for something to read--“If you like vampires and don't mind blood and guts, the Laurell K. Hamilton books are really good. If you do mind blood and guts, maybe you'd prefer...”).

And, while it's perfectly true that you can't judge a book by its cover, everybody does it, just the same. That means that the publisher’s marketing/art people will try very hard to produce a cover that's indicative of the sort of book this is--very difficult to do, if the book isn’t an identifiable “sort.” (You oughta see some of the outre’ foreign covers my books end up with!)

So, yes, you can sell a “cross-genre” book--but it's going to be a heck of a lot harder than selling one that can be described as “a thriller set in the Louisiana bayous,” or “a steamy Civil-War romance” (that's code for “It has a lot of graphic sex”).

This is not to say that all books can or should fit neatly into genre classifications, because of course they don't. It does mean that it's helpful if you can sort of classify a book according to one main genre, even if it does have oddball elements in it.

Having read all of the above (and if you've read any of my books), you are probably asking yourself how I managed to get published in the first place.

Well, luck, mostly. [g] And a small amount of cautious chicanery (I didn't tell either agent or editor the true nature--let alone the length--of the book. I got my first agent on the basis of an unfinished manuscript, so he didn't know how long it would turn out to be. (I described it merely as “a long historical novel, set in Scotland.”) And when I printed the whole manuscript, I did it in a proportional font (not at all common back then) and played games with the margins and spacings, so it wasn't apparent that the book was as long as it really was.). (I don't recommend you do this, by the way; editors are a lot more used to the idiosyncrasies of proportional typeface now than they used to be.)

I should note, though, that if I were writing Outlander today...I probably would have a much harder time getting published, if I got published at all. As for something like The Fiery Cross--I only got away with that, because I already was a bestselling author. No way in heck any publisher would take on a book like that from an unknown author in today's publishing climate.

So if you want to write enormous cross-genre books, more power to you! But--You Have Been Warned.

* A “single-title” book is a book that essentially stands by itself--by contrast with “category” books, which are sold as part of a “line.” Harlequin/Silhouette romances are the most common sort of category books, though there are also category fantasies and action/adventure books (the Mack Bolan series is an example
there). Category books are generally quite short, and have very strict length limits: the different “lines” of Harlequins have different limits, but generally speaking, they run about 60-75,000 words. These books are also sold more like magazines than like books; i.e., they're replaced in stores every thirty days.