I run a blog on e-books, with an emphasis on fiction writing and e-publishing for Kindle, iPad, Nook, etc., and one of the questions that comes up often is:
How long should an eBook be?
If it’s fiction, does it have to be novel (and, if so, how long should a novel be anyway?)
The short answer is … there are no rules when it comes to extension. It is not like a school report where there is a mandatory page count for your essay or story. You just have to meet your readers’ expectations by giving them a good deal for the money.
Durability Considerations for Nonfiction E-Books
I interviewed Kate Harper on my blog and she makes money publishing articles or “brochures” in the Kindle Store. Now these are more than the 500 word articles you can see in a blog post or article syndication site. Many of his works are in the 8,000-10,000 word range, but they are much shorter than a nonfiction book, which can be 75,000 words or more. She cuts the fluff and just gives readers what they want to know, and charges between $ 0.99 and $ 2.99.
At Amazon, for e-books priced from $ 2.99 to $ 9.99, freelance authors take home 70% of the royalties, or about $ 2 per sale. (Royalties are similar at Barnes & Noble and other big book stores.) While that probably won’t make anyone rich, he noted that he has done very little for promotion and sold quite a few e-books. This is because Amazon is a huge market and the number of Kindle owners continues to grow. They are hungry for fiction and non-fiction that they can download cheaply.
Considerations on the length of fiction e-books
When it comes to fiction, there are no extension rules either. Novels used to have a certain word count due to the economics of book printing, and shorter works (i.e., short stories and novels) simply weren’t published unless they were grouped to a length similar to that of a book. book.
With e-books, it costs no more to create a 150,000-word epic fantasy novel than it does to put together a 7,000-word horror short story. Of course, it takes more time to write and edit a longer job, but the costs of distribution and production are the same. You just have to make sure you have a complete and professional eBook that readers will enjoy.
If your story is short, you should make sure to include the word count in the product description or “book blurb” so that readers are not unhappy because they expected a novel and got a short story (this is true for not fiction too). Disgruntled readers leave bad reviews. Even if you only sell your eBook for $ 0.99, people will want to feel like they got exactly what they expected. In any case, it is good to keep what you promise.
If you think your story is too short to sell (i.e. less than 5000 words) for $ 0.99, which is the minimum price for which you can list your e-books on Amazon, B&W, etc., then you may consider bundling multiple stories to create a collection. . Although anthologies are not the most popular thing out there, this can work well if all of your short stories feature the same characters or are part of a similar theme.
I have a three-story collection of fantasy stories (the ebook is about 17,000 words in total) that I sell for $ 0.99 and it works pretty well considering how little I do to promote it. The stories are about the same characters that are in my (higher priced) novel. At $ 0.99, the e-storybook offers a cheaper option for people who are still unsure whether they want to buy the novel, although I suspect I sell more copies to readers who got the novel and wanted more adventures with the characters. main. Either way, it works for me, because I had originally written the stories before thinking about ezine, and they were just sitting on my hard drive, gathering virtual dust. If you have some stories like that, posting them electronically may be the ideal route.
Whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction, there are no length rules when it comes to e-books. Please your audience, earn some extra money, and enjoy being a freelance author!