With no book sales since September the twenty-fifth, or sixteen days ago if you prefer, it got me thinking. The other day I was reading one of my old mate Derek Haines’ blog posts from months ago on the subject of what he thinks today’s public seem to prefer when it comes to reading matter.
He looked at the sales figures for the best-selling ebooks at the time of his post. Any book longer than twenty-thousand words didn’t make it into the top twenty. Why? because most people these days, and by that I mean those a lot younger than both Derek and myself, appear to have little or no interest in reading a full length novel. Whether you believe it or not sales figures back up the assertion. Both of us watch the marketplace closely. We’ve become more aware of this latest trend in reading habits in the last several months.
So what’s the answer? It matters little which genre you choose, nor the target audience you aim at. Or for that matter how much money you spent getting your book out there. It appears that for the forseeable future, if you want your book(s) to be noticed by airheads, forget about writing full length novels. Instead it would appear that you must keep your next book’s word count below the twenty thousand ceiling.
As for my generation (the early Baby Boomers born between 1945-50) we’re to long in the tooth to bother about people who do not like to read. We were brought up on novels and so we’ll carry on championing them.
When you read your next novel, don’t keep quiet about it, tell your friends. In the meantime whatever my next book is about, will it be longer than twenty-thousand words?
Stupid question…
😉
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Have We Had Help? 
Sad days… However, many novels can become a “trilogy” or such, I suppose… Or perhaps we can sell each chapter as a part of a series (ha). That said, I also have to wonder if there hasn’t been a serious downturn in publishing itself, however. I have no way to gauge this, but…
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Just look around you Duncan, how many people are texting or watching movies or tv on their smartphones? Always providing of course that they’re not spontaneously combusting!
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Both you and Derek have hit it on the head short retention span or SRS. But there is also another side to it, I have noticed that if it does not go crash bang wallop or flows with gore you can forget it. My daughter loves Stephen King likes Clearing in the Forest but prefers anything spooky bit gory and scary – and shes 50…… but still loves her books
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In the meantime, the trend continues…
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