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demiurgentHim: Hey, "Interviewing Leather" is pretty good.
Me: Thanks.
Him: You ought to submit it to publishers when it's done.
Me: Yeah, that won't happen.
Him: What? Why not?
Me: It's unpublishable.
Him: You're kidding. It's pretty good.
Me: Thanks.
Him: No, I mean why would you say it's unpublishable.
Me: Right now it's about twenty thousand words long. There aren't another ten thousand words in it, I don't think. That means it'll be somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand words.
Him: So?
Me: So, more than twelve thousand words -- and those twelve thousand words better be fucking brilliant -- and less than about sixty thousand words, and you're in the dead zone. You have to be so amazing that someone will publish your novella when there's little market for novellas and no market for prose chapbooks at all.
Him: Heart of Darkness is in that dead zone, isn't it? It can't be forty thousand words long.
Me: It's not 1902 and I'm not Joseph Conrad.
Him: Wow. Is there any way to get it in print?
Me: Sure. I can self-publish -- doing the Lulu shuffle -- or I can sell a few novels, get a dedicated fanbase, and then publish a collection of short stories and novellas. Or both.
Him: Oh. Okay. Get on that.
Me: Working on it.
Me: Thanks.
Him: You ought to submit it to publishers when it's done.
Me: Yeah, that won't happen.
Him: What? Why not?
Me: It's unpublishable.
Him: You're kidding. It's pretty good.
Me: Thanks.
Him: No, I mean why would you say it's unpublishable.
Me: Right now it's about twenty thousand words long. There aren't another ten thousand words in it, I don't think. That means it'll be somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand words.
Him: So?
Me: So, more than twelve thousand words -- and those twelve thousand words better be fucking brilliant -- and less than about sixty thousand words, and you're in the dead zone. You have to be so amazing that someone will publish your novella when there's little market for novellas and no market for prose chapbooks at all.
Him: Heart of Darkness is in that dead zone, isn't it? It can't be forty thousand words long.
Me: It's not 1902 and I'm not Joseph Conrad.
Him: Wow. Is there any way to get it in print?
Me: Sure. I can self-publish -- doing the Lulu shuffle -- or I can sell a few novels, get a dedicated fanbase, and then publish a collection of short stories and novellas. Or both.
Him: Oh. Okay. Get on that.
Me: Working on it.