On Page Inflation
Charlie Stross asks and answers the question, Why are SF and fantasy novels the length they are?
In the 1960s, an SF novel was 60-80,000 words, with 80K being considered overblown and long. By 1990 they’d grown to 90-100,000 words. Luckily the word processing revolution came along in the 1990s, making it easier to write and revise longer books. (A different editor of my acquaintance observed that whenever one of her novelists switched to word processing, the average length of their books increased by about 10% .)
Grocery stores and Borders are also implicated.
© 2009 M. C. DeMarco
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