Throughout 2017 and 2018, I worked on a translation of the French sci-fi book ‘Un Roman dans la planète Mars’ by André Laurie (A Story of the Planet Mars, available to buy on Amazon at this link here). It is an old novella, first published in 1895, that had long ceased to be within copyright. My hope was that if I could translate a book which was out of copyright, I could then look for a specialist publisher who might be interested in putting it out. Then, I would have a genuine bona-fide published book out in the world, and I thought that this might be enough of a proven portfolio of work to allow me to convince publishers to let me translate their contemporary French works.
However, the response I got from every publisher was exactly the same: ‘The book is too short, so it’s not worth us putting it out by itself. Novellas just don’t sell very well, particularly ones as niche as this.’
I did convince one publisher to let me translate another one of Laurie’s works which could then be compiled with the first and sold together as a larger volume. But this was at the end of 2019. At the beginning of 2020, first I came out as trans, and then the pandemic hit, and I spent the rest of that year trying to work out who I was and what I was doing, and slowly putting the pieces of my life back into some semblance of order while avoiding a killer disease in isolation like everyone else.
Fast forward to 2022, and I’m in a much more stable place. I decided to put out my short story collection, ‘Talking to Lobsters’, myself through Amazon (available to buy at this link here ) because as a trans person, I’d been subjected to a lot of legal and medical gatekeeping; everyone wanted me to prove that I was ‘really trans’, and I was absolutely sick of asking for other people’s approval (I know I’ve banged on about this at length in previous blog posts, bear with me folks!). The result was that it was a roaring success (translation: some people have actually read the thing), and consequently, I’m completely in love with the self-publishing process.
‘I’ve still got this translated Novella on my hard drive, though.’ I thought after Talking to Lobsters was published, ‘Could I do something similar with that?’. So, I designed and formatted the book, uploaded it all to Amazon, and here we are! A 20,000 word novella that everyone said was too short and too niche is out for sale on the website of the world’s biggest bookseller. Now, I have to admit that I haven’t really started promoting it in earnest yet, so I don’t know if the world will take to it, but to be honest, if I can get six people to read it, for me it will have been worth it (I don’t know why six people represents major success but five would be abject failure, welcome to the deep dark recesses of my mind).
All of this brings me around to the point of this blog post; why are publishers so convinced that novellas won’t sell? You only have to look as far as Candide and Animal Farm to see that some of humanity’s greatest literary works come in the form of novellas. In addition, we now live in the world of tweets and tiktoks; a world where short-form content is the order of the day in our fast-paced and time-poor society. So why isn’t the novella experiencing a boom like in no other era before? You’d think that a shorter story which someone can devour quickly before moving onto the next one would be ideal in this day-in-age, if only a foresighted publisher would be brave enough to give novellas the same care, attention, and marketing budget that they give to their longer works.
How do publishers evaluate what might sell and what might not? Are they really comparing novels and novellas with the same marketing budgets in the same genres, aimed at the same audience, and for sale in the same formats and locations? I just don’t trust that publishers have access to this kind of precise data that would allow them to make truly informed decisions about which formats will sell and which won’t.
So, I believe in the novella! If you’re out there, and you finish your magnum opus to find that it’s only 20,000 words long, don’t fret! There’s no need to add in an extra cousin to your main character, who goes off on a bunch of adventures of their own, in sub-plots that are only vaguely connected to the main narrative! There’s no need to add in an extra paragraph of descriptions of places and people in each chapter, just to reach that magic number of words that traditional publishers deem to be acceptable! Your work is great as it stands! The caveat here, as with pretty much all my advice, is that your novella is unlikely to pay the bills by itself any time soon. There are traditional independent publishers out there who specialise in novellas, and so it’s possible that you might be able to get your work into bricks-and-mortar bookshops just like we all dreamed of when we were little, but the big displays in their windows, the review spaces in newspapers and magazines, and the poster campaigns in train stations are all likely to go to their larger, more word-heavy siblings.
You can, of course, self-publish and have your work appreciated for what it is by hundreds of people. Or, you can write the same fantasy YA novel that everyone else is writing. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a great book, and I’ve read several iterations of it myself. But shouldn’t the digital opportunities of the 21st century mean that we have more variety available to us, not less? You just have to decide what’s most important to you. Is it writing that book which has been screaming to get out of your head and onto paper for years? Or is it making a living from writing? Both are equally valid, but I’m really excited to read all of those novellas which publishers think won’t sell!
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