Right now this book is over $20 for the hardcover (including a discount) on Amazon and $13 for Kindle. My hot take is Kindle books should not be over $10 no matter their size or popularity, so that is a definite no from me. Still excited to get to Greenbone soon though!
Yeah, hard agree! I kind of understand that physical books cost pretty much the same to produce no matter how much they cost - but the kindle price is ridiculous.
Happy to see that you won't be biased in your thoughts, despite reviewing a popular author. Not that I expected you to fake your thoughts, but it's nice to see a reaffirmation. Small correction: Fonda Lee wrote a couple YA sci-fi books before publishing the Green Bone Saga. I think it was a trilogy? I couldn't tell you much about them. I think one of them is called Cross Fire.
I don't have an issue with novellas and honestly prefer short stories. I got started reading horror short stories. I have found myself prefering books books with an actual ending. I honestly don't find books likely American Gods or Kings of The Wyld and any less epis than Wheel of Time just think think that Jordan can't tell a tell a story that doesn't meander itself into oblivion. What i do agree with you about how books by "Prestige" authors are priced. You mentioned reading Cloud Roads. I picked up all three of the paperbacks for that trilogy for as much as Amazon Canada is charging for the Hardcover of Untethered Skies. I will let you guess which of the two i plan on reading.
@@MattsFantasyBookReviews ya... I am only a chapter into and enjoying it. Interesting world. But ya the three paperbacks were only about a dollar or so more.
Im reading this as soon as it comes out, but like you I dont have high expectations for novellas. Fonda Lee is currently working on a new novel that she describes as a samurai cyber punk space opera. Sounds wild. But not coming until early 2025 :(
I don’t understand why this novella exists rather than the novel version. I totally agree with you about the meh-ness of it, and I think I got even less enjoyment out of it than you did. Everything about it was so unmemorable. That was probably not the right place to start with Lee, as I just finished Jade City and really got into that story!
I'm going to disagree with you some on the Novella points. The reason Novella's (It's not just Martha Well's, It's all of them) tend to be so expensive are because even with a smaller word count, it doesn't do much with the other costs. (I'd leave sources for all of this, because I'm an aspiring author who's actually done a fair bit of research, but RU-vid keeps eating my links every time I do so...) So Novella's don't usually sell very well, or at least that's industry wisdom. That has changed somewhat due to authors like Martha Wells who have had sucess, but novellas have largely been an Indie thing (at least for Sci-fi and Fantasy) because it can remain competative on an Ebook platform opposed to a physical copy. Physical copies aren't actually that much cheaper for a few reasons. Firstly looking at them on the shelf Fantasy and Sci-fi readers have this idea that more is usually better. In other words there is this expectation set by the consumer that Epic Fantasy deserves an epic size, even if the word count isn't actually that different from a noir novel. Pick up a few books from your collection, compare the font, the amount of blank space and you'll find that there's often a good amount of difference from one book to another. The expectation then spills over to the second reason Novella's don't sell well: People don't buy enough of them to make it worth printing physical copies, thus printers don't optimize the process and thus rarely do novella runs. Novella's can't be easily stretched into the size of a full book. It just doesn't work well, so they have a smaller form factor. This puts them at double disadvantage. Lets use a book like Jade City for example. For the sake of arguement we'll say Jade City is 150,000 words. The average Novella is 30,000. If you put that on the shelf next to Jade City, one will be significantly smaller than the other, and be similarly priced. You are usually going to pick up Jade city if those two are in competition, because you feel like you will get more for your money. Since the novella sells less, there is less inscentive to run the presses for it long term. So printers do less optimization, even if the process uses fewer materials, the time investment is heavy enough to balance that out. Again, this is changing but it's slow. Lastly, the up front cost for a novella against a novel isn't that different. You still have to pay the author. You still have to pay an editor. You still have to pay a cover artist, and a copy writer, and a lined editor, and marketing and so on and on it goes. Yes, theoretically the time investment is less, but in practical terms there are still a large number of barriers to over come. If this seems cyclical it's because it kind of is. One problem feeds into all the others, and all the others feed into it. It's not a cash grab, or at least if it is, it probably isn't on Martha Well's end. There are a lot of barriers to making a good novella and delivering it cheaply. Personally, I love novella's both as an aspiring writer and as a reader. I've never had to be concerned about the boring bits in any of the novella's I've read, because there just isn't time for them. I like that fast pacing that usually comes with them. At the same time, I also enjoy longer full form epic Fantasy. I don't think one precludes the other.
