Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

No scuttlebutt, but I’m not so thrilled to hear this.  Shorter?!?  Even shorter?  WTF?  And it’s not like they are going to charge us any less for the shorter, suckier series romances that will be the result.

“And it’s not like they are going to charge us any less for the shorter, suckier series romances that will be the result.”

Bingo.

I’m also feeling kind of suspicious about the font/margin size excuse. How long have lines like Superromance been around? A couple decades at least, right? And they’re FINALLY going to start doing something about small fonts and unacceptably crowded margins? What the fuck?

According to my editor, this is actually the result of reader feedback.  I believe her, because I’ve had several emails from readers, bitching about the small print in my books, and how they had to crack the spine to read the middle.

I’ve also heard several authors say that their eds told them not to worry, that theirs are fine.  I think it’s mostly geared toward those of us who tend to write way too long.  I was told to cut 10,000 words from my last manuscript - I was doing great to cut 5,000.  Guess I’ll have some more readers bitching at me.

Stef, readers may complain about the font size, but why would they then make the stories SHORTER?  Hmm..perhaps just adding in a few pages wouldn’t completely bust the bank. 

I already remember being disgusted at how large the font size was in Getting it Good! by Rhonda Nelson (one example I have in front of me).  Yes, it was easy to read, but I also knew I was getting less story.

Though you know now…people won’t be able to claim that ebooks are so damn shorter than even a category book anymore.

I seldom buy a book under 300-350 pages to begin with. That will kick Harlequin completely out of my options, but then, I was never much of a category romance reader anyway.

The paper for their paperbacks is precut, and each book within a line has the same number of pages, which has to include front matter, many of them have an excerpt from another book, and the back matter, typically ads for other lines/books.  So increasing the number of pages isn’t an option.  They’re not decreasing pages - just trying to make the print more readable.

In my opinion, this is a classic case of making a mountain out of a molehill.  The word counts from authors varies widely, and they’re trying to make them more uniform.  Why does this make them the Evil Corporation from Hell, trying to hoodwink readers?

Stef, I think it’s because they’re making stories shorter, no way around that.  And why now would I buy a 4.50 paperback that’s going to be less than 250 pages when I can go to a single title with twice as many pages for not much more?

The main reason I don’t buy many H/S books is because they’re so short, so this doesn’t exactly make me want to spend more money on them.  Small print has never bothered me. 

But honestly….maybe Harlequin’s target audience is older readers who care about font size, etc.  So then my opinion really doesn’t matter and Harlequin doesn’t really care what I think about the matter since they aren’t making money from my age group.  I don’t think they’re trying to get younger readers, or aren’t exactly going about it well.

“The paper for their paperbacks is precut, and each book within a line has the same number of pages, which has to include front matter, many of them have an excerpt from another book, and the back matter, typically ads for other lines/books. So increasing the number of pages isn’t an option.”

This makes no sense—somebody came up with these standards in the first place, and I don’t see why the page number can’t be changed based on consumer wants. After all, they’re CUTTING THE WORD COUNT across the line—it would’ve been just as efficient, one would think, to increase the page number, also across the line.

I honestly don’t see why the word count had to go first, because the consumers didn’t want a shorter story. The consumers wanted bigger fonts and wider margins to make reading easier. The net effect is the same, I suppose, but one method resulted in a pretty substantial story cut, and one didn’t.

“The word counts from authors varies widely, and they’re trying to make them more uniform.”

This also doesn’t make much sense to me. If word counts were all over the board, then why not enforce EXISTING wordcount guidelines instead of CUTTING the wordcount?

And if this new wordcount guideline is meant for people who “write long”—that doesn’t change things, because “writing long” based on the old guidelines meant people who had trouble keeping within the 85,000 word limit. Now, people who were well within the old limit are considered “writing long.”

Unless I’m completely mis-reading things, of course.

“Why does this make them the Evil Corporation from Hell, trying to hoodwink readers?”

Because they didn’t need to cut the word count to satisfy the chief consumer complaint. People are paying the same amount of money for about 12% less story. That’s a pretty big chunk of story. For a 200-page paperback, that’s about 24 pages. So, in short, people buying a SuperRomance are no longer getting a SuperRomance, which (again, correct me if I’m wrong) has always promised richer, more complex storylines—they’re getting something that’s much closer to the length of a Harlequin Romance or Presents.

I’m basing my comments on what I’m hearing from other H/S authors who’ve contacted their eds.  They’re being told not to worry, that their word counts are okay.  People like me have been told that ours aren’t okay.

In other words, this is another one of those messages from On High that’s totally confusing and conflicting.  Nobody really has a clue what it all means.  If I figure it out - or how to write a single title length Bombshell in less than 80,000 words, I’ll let you know.

My reaction was to think I’ll be buying even less of these books now than I was before - because why would I want to pay the same amount of money for a shorter story?  (I blathered on a bit more than that on my own blog, so I won’t hijack this one to reiterate.)  But a salient point to me was something I saw at Alison Kent’s blog (which was, in turn, inspired by Jo Leigh’s blog) where she addressed the issue of age and target audience for Harlequin categories.

It seems to me that if Harlequin is making the choice to fix margins and font size, that’s fine, but to do so at the expense of story and cost to the reader per story gives me the impression that they aren’t worried that they are going to lose too much audience with these changes.  Which further implies to me that their target audience isn’t in what I call the “economically sensitive” zone of students and people at the early stages of a career where the difference in cost between Top Ramen and Cup O’Noodles helps choose dinner that night.  In other words, the target audience is a bit older and not as sensitive about the cost of a first run book, brand new on the shelf each month.

Perhaps I’m reading a little too much into their motivation, but the fact that they are making these changes now, at the point in time when we’re hearing constantly about the fact that baby boomers are aging, and how that aging generation is affecting various aspects of western society, does strike me as a potential reason behind the timing and the kind of changes they decided to make.

okay bigger font is fine but why cut the word count to allow for it?  From money pov I wouldn’t think that it would cost that much more to print a couple extra pages.  Secondly, from what I understand the total NUMBER of PAGES will be the same, but the WORD COUNT will be lower.  So you pay for the bigger font/less words in the same number of pages. 

I would have thought - and this is maybe naive - that given the books’ admittedly slim word count, the stories might be less satisfying with fewer words.

The number of words in a relatively short book isn’t such an issue for me if it’s one I’d want to read more than once. One of the reasons I stopped reading series books completely was that their style seemed to become very cookie-cutter. Most of my favorite authors had moved onto single title, and none of the new ones I came across seemed to have any spark. Part of that might have been because my tastes were also changing (some of the Bombshell line have been really enjoyable), but I’d rather read 70 000 original words with a bit of zing than 80 000 words of, well, you know…

Also… (sorry about the nosiness, but dammit I’m curious) might this mean that HQN/M&B will be paying their writers less on the basis that they’ll be writing fewer words?

Having worked in the printing industry and understanding how costs of paper and all that really does dictate why these companies want writers to write a certain length book, I still think that this sucks. If the publishers are claiming that they need word counts to be lower so they can fit it all in more comfortable margins and at larger font sizes, they are screwing the reader. They are effectively raising the price of the book by giving the reader less, without at least having the fortitude to confess that they don’t want to spend more to add pages to the books in order to solve the problem. You don’t like the way it looks? We’ll fix it by giving you less.

It’s already hard enough to tell/write a compelling story when such strict - and in my opinion, low - word counts are enforced. What will happen is that even more will be shaved off the story, making them less appealing. Readers will stop buying and the lines will continue to disappear, to which the publishers will then claim that the subgenres are dying or that writers aren’t any good any more. 

It’s a lose/lose situation if you ask me. If readability is truly the reason behind the word count reductions, then the publishers need to break into the bank and up the page counts.

What really sucks is that you know they won’t lower the price for less, but of course they’d increase the price if they determined to add more pages. This is the publishing equivalent of reducing serving sizes while keeping the price the same, then going around touting how brilliant they are for keeping prices down. Used to be you could get a medium soft drink for a dollar. Now that same buck buys you only a small, yet the fast food chains tell you how great they are for offering food for a buck. Look, readers, we haven’t raised our book prices in years. Of course, we’ve cut back on what you get for your money. Too bad for you!

It’s not just HQ that’s doing this. Avon has cut their desired page total for ST from 400 to 350.

And I’m going to say that the new size of the NEXT line and some of the ST best sellers (like Norah Roberts) totally negates the idea that they can’t change the # of pages in their books cause it’s already a done deal.

If they can change the whole freaken size and shape thay can easily alter the # of pages.

The romance industry has been under the gun recently….the choice to cut story rather than add pages is obviously a financial one.

I think it’s a mistake.

I can’t believe I’m about to make this comparison….but a similar thing has happened in the comic book industry.  Length of comic books has dropped from a high of 64 pages of mostly story (WWII) to only 17 pages of story in the late 80s.  Now they’re back up to 22 pages for the major publishers.  At the same time the amount of story per issue has diminished and the price has increased (outpacing inflation).

Recently sales of individual issues have been declining in favor of graphic novels or trade paperbacks with longer page counts.

Speaking of which, has anyone seen the Harlequin comic books? Are they out yet? Brenda Chin visited our RWA chapter last September and told us they’re turning some of their already published stories into manga. I’ve been curious but I keep forgetting to look for them (there is always a 4-year-old boy pulling on me when I am out in public).

I was told by one of my authors of a publisher that edited according to word count. The story suffered greatly—whole chunks of backstory were cut, which made the story much weaker, and it appeared that the author lacked writing skill. The reviewers said as much. I didn’t want to believe it.

If making word count is the ONLY reason to remove sections, and it doesn’t improve the quality of the book or God forbid actually makes it worse, it shouldn’t be done.

IMO, it shows very clearly where their priorities lie. Not with the people who produce what they sell, or even those who buy it. To themselves. They want to make the appearance of giving the readers what they want without actually doing it, to avoid additional expense.

I would call that bullshit.

I think there are two titles out for the Manga books at the moment.

Mistress Stef, what else do you know about them? I can’t find them on eharlequin.

Hold the phone, they’re on Amazon.

Who? Title?

No matter how you slice it, they’re making a deliberate decision to give the reader less story for the same amount of money. 

Are they really so close to the financial edge that it would bankrupt them to print their books with decent size margins and a little larger font size?  I have to admit that the font size hasn’t been an issue for me, but making those margins so small is. 

I can’t see any purpose for it aside from forcing readers to damage the books so they can’t pass them along to a friend or sell them to a used book store.  Built in obsolescence, one time only use…

Bottom line, whatever you think about the quality of writing in their books, the ink and paper product is a crap product, because it’s not reasonably usable in the way it was intended.

Karla: go to Amazon and type Harlequin and manga. There are four showing.

In the effort of full disclosure, I have now heard from my editor with clarification.  I’m seeking more clarification.

Super authors were notified that in essence, this is a change in HOW we count words.  Instead of using pages at 250 wpp method, we’re moving to using computer word count.

That would mean, for example, that my last Superromance, which was 340 ms pages (85K on the dot by the old method) and was 71K-ish by Word computer word count, is just what they’re looking for.  Actually, if we go by the computer word count, I was actually on the “low” side of new 70-75K word count.  Darn!  That means I could have written a couple of other scenes that I would have liked to include. (g)  (As you can see, I tended to be one of those writers who came in on the long side, too.)

I understand that this is a business.  I understand Harlequin needs to make a profit.  I’m all for that.  I’m not dissing my publisher here.  I am asking questions, and I was curious about what readers would think.

Now I’m just still confused. (g)

Oh, and interstingly enough, there’s a letter to the editor in the RWR this month by someone requesting an article about how publishers determine word count, and wishing for total consistancy across the industry.  The 250 word per page was the BEST method for figuring word count when we used typewriters that were also fairly consistant—at least as far as font went.  But now we have computers that can actually count up the words for us.

{shrug)  All explanations of word count I’ve always heard went something like this:  A single word line of dialogue takes up just as much space on a page as if you’d fill up the whole line.  So they were looking for an average.

Which method is actually better?  I don’t know.  But yes, getting everyone to agree on ONE method of counting words would be a very good thing.

Because obviously the word count can vary greatly on the same ms, depending on how you’re doing the counting.

I heard about this from my friend, Sharon Mignerey.  I didn’t get any letter for my Luna Books (which is good because Sorcreress of Faith, coming February is my longest book yet, in about 625 pages, I think).  I’m pretty sure that readers will notice shorter/thinner stories, especially since these weren’t massive books anyway.  Let’s face it, massive books may very well need good editing/cutting…(am thinking of the last Harry Potter and the reissue of It).  But publishers have been worried about paper costs for some time.

Robin

And Blaze authors have been told by our editors not to change a thing.  That if any of us are writing too long so that the text of the finished books bleeds too heavily into the margin and causes too small of a font to be used, we will be contacted individually by our editors.  In the meantime, however, we are not to worry about changing a thing!

Earlier this morning, because of that letter to the editor, I volunteered to write a full article on the word count issue for RWR. Haven’t heard back.

FASCINATING. Thanks to all of you for weighing in.

One thing: isn’t it motherfucking weird that the publishing industry hasn’t switched to computer wordcounts yet? I mean, sweet baby Buddha, Word and WordPerfect and even old-skool programs like WordStar have been able to pop out reasonably accurate word counts for a long time now—definitely when I took my WordStar class back in grade school, about 16, 17 years ago.

Anyone have any idea why? Is it one of those “This is the way we’ve ALWAYS done it!” sorts of things, or do they have a compelling reason?

Evil Auntie, if the books are retailing for the same price, authors will be paid the same because the royalty rate is the same. I have a Hq author friend who has always written short because if she gets paid the same whether her book is 55k or 60k why would she write the extra 5k?

Beejay, this isn’t about bankruptcy, but it is about the bottom line and increasing profists. Every little bit counts, and paper is the worst. PAPER and shipping costs are why all the ST lines have gotten “shorter”.

That and the fact that a lot of publishers are shifting to determining by computer word count.

Thank you, Susan, for clearing up. If that is the case, then this whole discussion throughout the blogosphere is much ado about nothing. The books won’t actually be changing at all, just the method of counting. I’m a dialogue heavy writer and hte book I just turned in was 75k by computer word count, but over 80k by courier pages x 250. Frankly, I’ve always understood the courier page count much better than the computer word count, because a line is a line whether there are 10 words on it or 1.

Candy, THIS is the reason they don’t determine count by computer count. (Also the fact that your word computer count can be HIGHLY inaccurate. Many word processing programs count every punctuation marks as a separate word. “Wow, that’s dumb,” would be nine words rather than three.) But, more importantly, if your entire book is in strings of short dialogue, it could be 25k and still fill up three hundred pages. Does that make sense?

Thanks for the info, Diana. I’m a curious cat, so I’ve run “Wow, that’s dumb,” through two of the most popular word processing programs (Word, Wordperfect) and two of the most popular desktop publishing programs (InDesign and PageMaker) and all four came up with three words. I’m willing to bet that Quark, the other 900-lb. gorilla in the desktop publishing biz, will come up with three words, too.

Do you know which word processing program(s) specifically use that fucked-up algorithm for determining word count?

I think it makes more sense for print publishers to use page count/250 words. They are dealing in actual paper, and a dialogue heavy novel might be fine on word count, but when all the white space is added in, it is much longer.

I don’t get it.

But Tonda…those bigger paperbacks cost more money and I have heard readers bitching about paying 9.99 for a larger HEAVIER book that might be easier to read but harder to hold.