Must Every YA Action Heroine Be Petite?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Sort by price: lowest first. 75 pages, over a thousand books--just in the sci-fi category--listed for $0. Incidentally, Amazon doesn't let you go past the 400th page. An addition 5000 books listed at the minimum Kindle Store price of $0.99.
Poorly Photoshopped covers. Absurd titles, splitting into fractals of subtitles, "series" this, "saga" that. I picked 10 at random, the page-length estimates average out to be about 50 "printed pages"; one in particular was only 12 pages.
Download a try reading a few of them. 50 pages is 50 too many. Now read the reviews. Glowing expositions of "couldn't put it down until I finished it in one sitting". No shit! I should hope you could read 50 pages in one sitting.
In contrast, I packed up my poorly-maintained blog into a Word document and it was 150 pages for the last three years. With no change in my writing habits, I could be releasing a Kindle Book every year.
Now, swap the sort: go highest to lowest. THIRTEEN books listed at $200. That little bit of absurdity aside, the general fare isn't much better than the bottom of the price list. A few notable exceptions, but on the whole, it's clear people will probably prefer to take their chances on a $1 book that will probably suck than a $30 book that will probably suck. On the 400th page, all of the titles are $3.99. They average around 250 pages, but there are still some 50 page titles in the mix.
As far as the average consumer is concerned, books are a plentiful commodity. EBooks opened the door to allow anyone to publish. And then everyone did.
But even scarier, the readers bought in. Readers love their niche categories, and will consume anything in it. Is it any surprise that serious authors--looking to make a living, who also have the barest modicum of writing skill that can set them completely apart from the massive piles of garbage in the market--will optimize for what readers want?