Tor and TorDotCom Publishing have been cornerstones of speculative novella publishing over the past few years, with both established writers publishing novella series — such as Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series — as well as authors debuting with a novella. “A 40,000 word book in many other genres would simply be a novel, and we’re starting to see that blurriness bleed over more into SFF publishing,” Chen said. “Genre stalwarts marking Hugo ballots will be eyeing word counts, but there are also plenty of readers who will look at what they’re holding in their hands and simply think ‘book.’” “Open endings feel more welcome, or stories where the character’s ‘arc’ doesn’t have to be as steep — perhaps we just go on a nice sort-of-slice of life journey with the character instead,” Hall said. There was a time when, in order to read a speculative novella, one had to subscribe or purchase an issue of one of the notable genre magazines that publish them, such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Asimov’s. Lately, however, publishers and magazines alike are making them more accessible to audiences. Novellas can be found online (like Uncanny Magazine novellas) and — with editors such as Hall and Chen taking the helm — conceptualized as books. Editors, too, have hopes for this form. A one-session read is another great way to describe what a novella is. If we’re going off word count, like the Hugo and Nebula awards do, a novella is generally anywhere between 17,500 to around 40,000 words. Page count can vary as well, depending on the structure of the story. Neon Hemlock’s Nebula award-winning novella And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed is about 80 pages (give or take, depending on the print or ebook edition) and about 21,000 words. T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead is on the tail end of the spectrum, at a little over 40,000 words. As previously mentioned, though, regardless of where they land in word count, novellas are powerful. They are bite-sized books that can hold the arc(s) and immensity of a novel. And readers are taking note. Resurgence might be the most accurate word, ring said: “I don’t want to speak incorrectly here but it’s my sense that, not too long ago, publishing a novella was seen as a side-step or a ‘something-else’ kind of move for an author,” Hall said. “Now, it seems pretty widely accepted that new authors can successfully build careers on novella-length works — like Neon Yang with The Black Tides of Heaven (which TIME called one of the Best Fantasy Books of All Time!), before then writing their debut novel, The Genesis of Misery (September 2022).” “A novella is a great opportunity to experiment with voice and structure, since it has less time to collapse under its own weight, allowing an author to try more ambitious forms,” ring said. “Another way to approach things could be looking at a novel outline and slicing out a subplot,” ring said. “How does the story look then? It might the right length for a novella.” “For any aspiring novella writers reading this, I want to leave you on this note: I am the lucky editor who published the most recent winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novella, Nghi Vo’s The Empress of Salt and Fortune,” Chen said. “She was a slush find who didn’t have an agent at the time, and — this fact still floors me — I was only the second person to read that extraordinary story. This is exactly how a novella would have been acquired in the early days of SFF, but the new reach of the format in the last decade or so has allowed a much larger readership to access Nghi’s and other novella writers’ work, and we are all the better for it.”
Intensity of Emotion
“I have a few hopes for the speculative novellas future,” ring said. “I look forward to further innovations in form, voice, and structure. I look forward to folks who’ve only worked in the short form spinning out their ideas into something I can put a cover on. And I look forward to what seems like the greater number of publishers, particularly small presses and indie operations, willing to take a chance on ambitious, subversive, and challenging novella projects. Because I can’t wait to read those books.” “It’s such a versatile way of creating narrative, and individual editors and publishers will always have preferred styles in what they acquire, so the more variety in who’s publishing the better,” Chen said. “We need more voices writing and also more eyes buying stories. The readership is bigger than ever right now, and I’d love to see publishers meet that hunger.” “The future is here! Okay, I’m being silly, but also, I do feel like what I would hope for this format is already happening in a lot of ways,” Hall said. “Novellas are hitting traditional bestseller lists […] they are finding homes on shelves in physical bookstores, and they are showcasing the range of SFF in wonderful, one-sitting, immersive reads — literary, cozy, terrifying, heartbreaking, beautiful. There isn’t a limit to what kind of story can shine in this space, which is great.”
