If you are hoping to find an agent and have a trade house publish your book, tomes don’t sell. I know that several Harry Potter books are massive, but publishers are more likely to give leeway once a series is up and running.
There are good reasons why agents and publishers want books to stay within the genre boundaries. The longer a book is, the more it costs to print. Add to this shipping. Huge books don’t pack well—you can’t get as many in a box. Book stores look at a thick book as owing them money every day it doesn’t sell. Barns and Noble pay by the square foot for their stores. Every inch a book takes up costs money. If you place one high-priced book on the shelf or three other cheaper books, it is easy to see a tome may not be a moneymaker. If you don’t know if any of the four books would sell, would you put one thick, high-priced book or three regularly priced books on your shelf?
In the self-publishing world, your paper bill eats into profits. Members of the Cast (MOTC) could have been 828 pages long, the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) limit. Printing on KDP costs $0.012 per page + plus a fixed cost of $0.85. MOTC costs $3.00 for the 250 pages plus $0.85 fixed cost, rendering a printing cost of $3.85.
Amazon pays 60% of the list price, minus printing. I sell print copies of MOTC for $10.00. This calculates as $10.00 x 0.60 = $6.00 – $3.85 for printing, giving me a royalty of $2.15. If MOTC had been 828 pages long, my cost for the pages would have been $9.93 + $0.85 = 10.78 for printing. Write a book 828 pages long, and I have to charge $21.55 a book to receive the $2.15 per book. Remember, this is a paperback! I shudder to think of spending $24.00 (remember tax) for a book.
Many places on the Internet suggest lengths for genre books. I write Young Adult. I need to be between 60 and 85 thousand words. The sweet spot is around 70K. Fantasy can stretch a little for world-building, but don’t shop a 120K YA book with agents. She won’t take it because editors won’t take it, because the bean counters know they can’t make money.
These are all good reasons to tighten your writing and avoid Over Telling.
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