It’s certainly a happy Monday for me. I got word yesterday that my short historical romance, Heart of Deception, was the very first book to be reviewed on Kayla Tocco’s brand new review site A Whole Latte Romance Reviews ! The review goes live at 11:00am EST.
I’m so excited, not just because I was the first, but also because my Victorian romance garnered four stars in the review. Click the link above to read the review in its entirety.
To celebrate, I’m giving away a copy of Heart of Deception to a commenter on my blog today. Tell me how short is too short for fiction these days if you’re going to pay money for it? I’ve noticed some reviewers are turned off by short books. So what’s an appropriate length?
I also wanted to let you know that I’m being interviewed over at Lia Davis‘s blog today and talking about my erotic contemporary Almost Perfect. If you leave a comment there, you can be entered to win a copy of Almost Perfect too.
Hope to see you around the internet today!
Jenna Jaxon Romance--because passion is timeless. 
I am a reviewer who doesn’t care for short books, as a rule. 75K is usually my cutoff for reviewing, because the plots in most (greater than 90%) of the novellas I’ve read feel rushed to me. Trish’s books are an exception to that rule. Now Carrie-Anne’s books at 300K are more my style. I like a book with some meat on its spine! Congratulations on the 4 stars. Great review!
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Congrats on 4 stars – great way to start the day.
Won’t bother commenting on book lengths – everyone else has pretty much said it all.
Hope sales soar for Heart of Deception.
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I do like some shorter stories. I think that really short stories (25 pages or so) should be free little stories to introduce the author’s writing style. 50 to 150 pages should cost @ $.99 to 1.99. Anything more than about 150 pages or so should be priced according to a full book $1.99 to 4.99. I don’t think e books should cost more than $4.99. Of course some authors that I love I will pay slightly more for, but I don’t think that ebooks should cost the same (or more) than print. Generally, I would think about 1/2 the cost of the print version (or a little more) would be about right.
Congrats on the review!
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Well deserves, Jenna. It’s a great little story.
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And you were surprised with the review?
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Congrats! I agree with Marika that anything under 5K is toeing the line. But anything under 15K or 20K, I prefer for the description to tell me the word count (or page count) and that will help me decide.
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Congratulations on your great review! I personally tend to prefer sagas (hence why all my non-YA books are over 300,000 words), but short books can be very good too. I’ve written some books that would be considered novella-length (and one novelette-length) were they adult books, but I deliberately planned them as very short, with brief, vignette-length chapters in a few of them. Each book should only be as long or short as it needs to be, even if many people these days seem to be encouraging a certain length for all books, regardless of how large or small the plot trajectory is.
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Congratulations on the great review! I’m not surprised at all!
I don’t really have a preference on story length. Some stories need a longer word count to tell it all and others simply don’t.
I have a short story up at a word count of just over 5000 and I’m charging .99 for it. Just because a story may be shorter does not mean it isn’t good or worth money or deserve reviews. The author worked hard on it–long or short.
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Congratulations on the great review, Jenna! You certainly deserve it. As for book/story length… I am the novella queen, lately. All my stuff is around 35,000 words long, and I find I am drawn to books of about that length as well. I feel comfortable paying $2.99 – $4.99 for novellas, with the higher price going to authors I already know and who have a back list. Shorter works, I think should be priced lower, somewhere between $0.99 and $1.99. The shorter, the cheaper. And, if they’re really short (5,000 words or less), they ought to be given away free as promotions to encourage sales on longer works. That’s how I see it, anyway.
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Congrats on the great review. I think anything under 5k should either be free or .99. That said, I’m not turned off by short stories. Sometimes a short story is better than a novel. 🙂
Marika Weber
maw1725@gmail.com
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No surprise, Jenna!! Your books rock! Congrats on the awesome review!
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