In Today’s Journal
* The Hierarchy of Sales
* Fiction Lengths
* Just a Reminder
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
The Hierarchy of Sales
Just in case anyone out there didn’t know this, there’s a hierarchy of sales in fiction. I’m talking about what individual readers buy, not what’s easier to sell (license) to publishers. That depends on the publisher.
First so we’re on the same page, a couple of definitions:
The Saga
is a single, ongoing story about an individual that continues through several time-sequential novels, novellas, or short stories.
Each installment of a saga features the same POV character(s)—the ‘who’ that the overall story is about—though each installment often has its own cast of secondary and tertiary characters.
For example, the following are the POV characters for major sagas in my own writing:
- Wes Crowley (The Wes Crowley Saga, period western, 22 novels),
- Mark Hanson (The Journey Home Saga or The Ark Saga, SF, 10 novels),
- and Nick Spalding (The Nick Spalding Saga, action-adventure, 4 novels).
The Series
of novels, novellas, or short stories is different. It can be focused on a particular character, but it can be focused on a theme instead and feature a different POV character for each story. Either way, the stories are not in a sequential timeline. They comprise several individual stories rather than one continuous story.
Major examples of series in my own work include The Stern Talbot PI series (11 novels and novellas) and the Blackwell Ops series (currently at 53 novels).
Maybe interesting to note, despite being presented in 53 novels, the Blackwell Ops themed series features only 31 POV characters. That’s because some of those characters’ stories continued in sagas inside the series:
- The Soleada Garcia Saga, in concert with Charlie Task, ran through 7 novels,
- POV characters Buck Jackson, Jeremy Stiles, John Quick, Philip Dunstan, and Paul Stone each ran through a 2-novel saga,
- Charlie Task ran through a 3-novel saga,
- Jack Temple ran through a 4-novel saga, and
- Sam Granger ran through a 9-novel saga.
Only 20 POV characters were featured in only one novel. (As I did all this math, I got the feeling I like writing more in sagas than in series. Grin.)
Okay, with those definitions in mind, here’s the hierarchy of sales:
- Novels and novellas in series or sagas sell better than anything else, especially if you give readers more than one new story per year. The more often you publish a new installment the better. This is probably because readers become invested in the character(s) or theme.
- One-off novels and novellas sell better than shorter fiction.
- Short fiction collections sell better than individual short stories.
Fiction Lengths
First a note on novel lengths: Only in the USA and only in traditional publishing is a novel (for example) ‘required’ to be a particular length.
For many years, the ‘novel’ had to be at least 60,000 words or roughly 240 pages. The tradpubs literally forced big-name writers to ‘beef-up’ or ‘pad’ their shorter manuscripts or to ‘cut’ words from longer manuscripts to more closely align with that required length.
(For just one example of the latter, see Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Long after it was published traditionally, his estate released the full, uncut version for sale.
For another example, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is a complete novel in under 30,000 words. To justify publication, the tradpubs marketed it as a ‘short novel’ or ‘novella.’)
The point is, that required length had nothing to do with Story or with writing.
It was an arbitrary number advanced by the tradpubs so they could commit to a particular ‘folio’ (a sheet of paper folded once to form two leaves [four pages of a book]) and thereby justify price points and balance overhead costs.
Again, strictly business. Nothing to do with writing or Story. You and I are writers. Yes, we dabble in business, but we’re all about Story.
Okay, so these are my own fiction lengths. I sell worldwide. Readers (and I) aren’t as concerned with how a writing is classified for length as we are for whether the story speaks to us. I use these divisions for pricing purposes only:
- To 99 words Flash fiction (collections only)
- To 1999 Short-Short Story 1.99
- 2000 to 6999 Short Story 2.99
- 7000 to 9999 Novelette 2.99
- 10,000 to 24,999 Novella 3.99
- 25,000 to 44,999 Short Novel 4.99
- 45,000 to 79,999 Novel 5.99
- over 80,000 Long Novel 6.99+
A few notes:
- These are only general guidelines for myself and they pertain only to ebook prices. You’ll see other length divisions if you visit other places.
- These price points are designed to undercut tradpub prices while maintaining a sense of ‘perceived value’ in readers.
- I always price individual novels within a series or saga the same as all the other books in that series or saga.
- At Amazon, I price every short story regardless of length at $2.99 (70% royalty).
Tomorrow I’ll be back with a wrap-up on the year. Talk with you again then.
Of Interest
Writer Resources Tons of all kinds of stuff to help with websites, converting weights and lengths, dictionaries, licensing, etc. Go browse.
Free Downloads More stuff to help with all kinds of things. All free from me and a few others.
How to be the archivist of your own family Memoir, presented as it is from a single point of view (yours) is more closely akin to fiction than nonfiction.
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 880
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 880
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for December……………………… 31000
Fiction for 2025…………………………… 785647
Nonfiction for December.………………… 28280
Nonfiction for 2025………………..……… 293410
2025 consumable words………………… 1071488
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 19
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 36
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29