1665

‘Writers are underpaid’ is a general truism. But if I’m talking about value for money issues between competing books, comparing the books to movies is kind of beside my point.

1666

Charging the same price for a 150 page novella and a 600 page novel is abusive, regardless of what that price is. That Murderbot is so clearly 1 book split into 4 novellas so they can charge 4X as much is not something I particularly want to reward/encourage, even though I greatly enjoy the series.

1667

Doesn’t quality enter into the equation? Or should we just be paying for books by the pound, like vegetables?

Cinemas charge the same for a 90min movie as they do for a Lord of the Rings. Videogames have little correlation between price and playtime (and I would happily pay a premium for shorter, higher quality games anyway).

I don’t know, it just seems an odd metric to judge value for money by - basically the amount of time it takes to read something, rather than the journey it takes you on.

1668

In how prices are set? No. They might charge a premium if they think they can get away with it due to an author’s popularity, but that has zero correlation with the (frankly quite subjective) quality of the writing.

But they don’t charge the same for a 20 minute short film. It’s not about charging more for more page count in the same category. A novella is a different category than a novel, and you’ll see that reflected all over, right down to the part where before digital distribution came along you’d rarely see novellas or anything shorter than that released on their own - because it didn’t make sense as a product compared to the printing costs.

1669

A quick browse of my bookshelves, back from when I bought paper books:

A Clockwork Orange, 149 pages
The Meaning of it All, Richard Feynman, 120 pages
The Body Artist, Don DeLillo, 124 pages (described as a novel on the front, btw!)
Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, 159 pages

None of which seemed to be any cheaper than books 2x-3x the size. Are these all novellas? (obv Feynman’s is essays, but you know what I mean.) Should they have cost less?

1670

Come on, this isn’t remotely true. They are 4 different stories. Self-contained.
No cliff hangers. Would that in the past have been released as a collection of 4 stories in one volume? That I can maybe get on board with.

1671

I used to go to a used book store in Evanston, IL that worked on this model. Market Fresh Books, it was called. I would often browse for books made from that really light paper that weighed much less than they looked like they should. Photography books were murder.

1672

These days? yeah, those would probably be considered novella-length (though Hitchhiker’s, at least, is over 200 pages according to Amazon). Standards change.

1673

Disagree. Completely. Those are four chapters of the same narrative.

No? A really great 600 page book and a completely crap 600 page book cost the same.

And it’s not like I can’t find a book as brilliant as one of the Murderbot novellas that will entertain me for far longer for the same price.

1674

Well I can offer proof :)
image

(Er, spoilers for the end of HHGTTG I guess!)

1675

Well, yeah, depending on format the same word count is gonna come in at different page counts. Which makes it a pretty arbitrary measure of length tbh, but it’s a bit difficult to come by others.

Anyway. There’s dozens if not hundreds of other novellas priced at $4 like the first Murderbot novella, there are very few priced at $10. If it were the standard price I would still be complaining because I can’t afford to pay that kind of money for every book at the rate I read (I don’t pay that much for novels, either, generally), but it wouldn’t stand out.

1676

The author should charge what his/her market will bear. Is it really that big an issue? Most books come down in price and it is not that hard to wait a bit. I waited for Murderbot and they seem to run sales enough that you can get the books a lot cheaper with some patience.

1677

I agree. The flip side is the consumer will assign value and make purchasing decisions based on perceived value. The consumer may compare the length of a book and determine it’s not a good value for the price, as many in this tangent have done. Nothing unfair either way.

1678

Sure, but there are plenty of quality 600 page books, so no one is suggesting that the length is all that matters.

Very much this. The move to breaking novels into pieces in order to earn more for the writers isn’t a terrible thing, as long as you price each segment accordingly. Pricing them as full-length novels is egregious.

1679

It seems less obvious to those of us who had to wait 9 months for each installment over a period of several years ;)

As a reader I guess it comes down to whether or not you like more frequent releases at a higher per word price point - or less frequent releases at a more bargain rate…

BTW - there is another Novella coming out next year.

1680

I pay more for Mac & Jack’s than I do for Bud Light. I’d pay more for a Tesla than a Fiat. An iPhone costs more than a no-name Android phone. It’s absolutely fine to charge for quality.

Pisses me off how little respect some readers have for the effort that goes into quality writing.

Genre fiction is a medium-sized market with huge competition. Even with the success of the series and the pricing, I’d be shocked if the Murderbot author is pulling down as much income as your average mid-level marketing schlub.

1681

Quality absolutely factors into how much I’m willing to pay for a book. But it doesn’t factor into what price books get set at - I’ve really enjoyed self-published books that ran me a few bucks, and know more than enough not to buy a Left Behind book that still goes for $11 digitally. And if you asked me whether a mid-series Murderbot novella at $11 was a better buy than my favorite Martha Wells novel, Death of the Necromancer, which she is selling for $3…well, no. It just isn’t. And hey, Death of the Necromancer is older and that’s a factor too…so let’s look at her immediately pre-Murderbot series, the Raksura books, which she is still writing more for, albeit mostly short story collections now. The most expensive entry in that series? $10. And again, you’re getting the same quality of writing, but you’re getting a full novel amount of it.

I’d love it if writing were a more lucrative, financially viable sole profession. But I don’t think you get there by charging $10 for novellas, I think you get there by either patronage, or getting a lot more people buying any given book.

1682

Yup, if they were 4 each that’d be $16, which is still a lot for a single book, but I doubt I’d even have noticed.

1683

As someone who spent three years slaving over a novel to see it rejected by every agent, then published it myself to see it sell about 100 copies, it is not the case that I don’t know how hard it is to write a story or a novel.

1684

Not on sale (only $3.99 each though), but I just noticed that there are 2 omnibus books of Thieves’ World anthologies in Kindle format now:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BTRVYNH?ref_=dbs_p_mng_rwt_ser_shvlr&storeType=ebooks