Novels or Novellas for 2013?

I plan to write 3 novels and 6 novellas in 2013. The biggest compliment I've gotten for several of my novels is that they "read like novellas."

I'm going with novellas this year, but still two novels in my trilogy.

I have only one novel planned. The rest will all be novellas or novelettes.

I'll be doing novels, novellas, shorts and collections this year.

I began with individual shorts, (eventually also wrote a novel) but then I realized people found my shorts too short.  So I ventured into a 17.5k novella first, and more recently, a 37.5k novella. 

80k+ Novels are harder to write.  Novellas between 30-40k are great as they can hit the 2.99 price point and readers feel satisfied with the length.  However, having said that, I don't pre-plan my novella length, because a story has to be told well, no matter how long it gets. 

I'd love to start doing Novellas, but we'll see how the current project pans out.

KM Logan said:

I'd love to start doing Novellas, but we'll see how the current project pans out.

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I'm the opposite here. I'd love to do novels, but I can't write that long

As a reader, I genuinely prefer to read novellas. I just don't like having to invest much time into a book anymore, so about 20-35k words is perfect for me.

I think I'm the only reader who prefers that.

I'll only be investing my time into novels this year.

I'll write the stories I feel like writing, at whatever length they happen to want to be. Probably one novel, several novellas, and maybe some short stories. Oh, and some horribly hypocritical nonfiction.

I released a little over 100,000 original words, last year. Not sure how this year'll fare, but I've already got about 40,000 words of WIP written, so...

I'll be writing stories that will be as long as they need to be.

Currently I have a series of novelettes ready to go, and at least two novels. The others I'm writing I'm not sure if they'll be novella or novel length. I won't know until they're done.

After four full-length novels in a row, this year I'll be working on two novellas and a book of essays.

As a writer, I'm working on both for this year. As a reader, I almost always prefer novels, the longer the better.

smreine said:

As a reader, I genuinely prefer to read novellas. I just don't like having to invest much time into a book anymore, so about 20-35k words is perfect for me.

I think I'm the only reader who prefers that.

I'll only be investing my time into novels this year.

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Nah. I'm a novella reader too.

I'll probably write a mixture of short stories, novellas, and (short) novels but I would really be happy to just write novellas, the shorter the better.

As a reader, I've been enjoying novellas a lot now that more authors are free to write and publish them! Which is not to say I don't enjoy longer novels still, but I tend to take a break from them to read a short story or novella in between sections.

As a writer, I have planned WIPs of all different lengths, from 15K to 120K, but this year I'm going to attempt some shorter things. At the first/second draft stage on my current projects, I can definitely see the novella-sized one turning out MUCH easier than even half of the 90K novel I wrote. But that also could have been because it was my first book and I didn't know what I was doing.

I like the idea of having more books out there for people to find me by, so as a newbie author, that's a motivation to write shorter too.

A mix of both. Aiming for 4 novels in my usual genre and some novellas in another genre under a pseudonym.

I'm working on the 4th episode of what will eventually be a six episode novel length release that I WILL release as a novel.

(that made sense in my head when I thought it...)

smreine said:

I think I'm the only reader who prefers that.

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That makes two of us. I yearn for the return of the shorter novels--which have to be called novellas because the average novel has grown too large. I also write shorter stuff. This should not be taken as an endorsement of the series format. I've been disappointed there...

I will be working on a mixture of novels, novellas, novelettes and shorter shorts. I have several novels and at least six novellas planned. I also have around two dozen shorts that I need to write.