I know I've asked this before

[james_davis_nicoll]

I was reading a mystery last night that turned out to be a lot shorter than I expected because the manuscript pages were single-sided. The book turned out to be less than 280 pages long. Despite this lack of length the author managed to fit an entire plot between the two covers.

It's comparatively rare for an SF novel to be that short and nearly unheard of for a fantasy novel to be under 300 pages. I've also never seen a mystery that came close to the brick-like dimensions of many F&SF novels. There seems to be a hard limit of about 400 pages over in mystery.

Mysteries also eschew the cliff-hanger ending and the book-fragment approach, which I greatly appreciate.

Does it make sense to ask why modern [1] F&SF readers appear to prefer longer lengths than do mystery readers?

1: I have a number of older books upstairs that come in under 200 pages and like the mystery they all have complete plots.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

"We need to fit at least three copies per rack pocket."

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I have this dim memory from the 1980s that there's a magic book length that determines the boundary between when you can fit as many or more books faced as spine out but I think that puts a cap on length rather than encouraging longer books.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Faced vs. spine is a shelf thing; in rack pockets everything is faced. But there's a fairly standard size, and it turns out you don't want to get most of your authors above the length where fewer than "n" books fit in a pocket (I think n=3, but I'm less certain on the number than on the basic concept).

I'm still remembering sf/fantasy authors being *cut back* on acceptable lengths a while ago, after the initial growth through the 80s.