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BOOKS > Slimbook editions
Cover art by Jade
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Slimbooks fall between ChapBooks (which are shorts, as their name suggests, being anything
between 11,000 and 23,000 words long), and full-sized paperbacks (which begin at something like
75000 - 80000 words.
A 'slim' is about the same length, in number of words as the average SF novel of the 1960s era: about 45000 words.
Rather than bulking these titles out into full-size paperbacks — which could be done; and indeed many
modern books are bulked out with 'white space' to get them up to size, and price! —
at DreamCraft we pack them into a smaller space, to save you money!
So, 'slims' are around 135pp ... they're light
to mail, so you save at the post office; they cost less to print and bind, so you save again. And they're
light to slip into your bag, if you want a good read on the bus or train, on the way to work!
On the artistic level, how does the writer shoehorn a 'proper' story into the confines of a short-novel?
This question has been asked (by an aspiring writer, in fact, looking for a 'steer' in this direction).
So we put it to MK, and here's the maestro's advice:
The process begins long before you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). It starts at the
most fundamental planning stage, when the story is still in embryonic form, in your mind. All books,
of whatever length, start out as basic ideas: the general inspiration out which the story grows.
Long novels get long because they're full of sub-plots.
Usually, if you examine a novel, if
you strip out the sub-plots you could cut the ESSENTIAL STORY down to something surprisingly brief.
When you're setting out to write a 'Slim' issue, you do the same thing in reverse. You get the
essential story, and you don't load it up with sub-plots, so it stays shorter. Any of the Slims
we've published to date could have been bulked out with subplots and then set in large type with
a good deal of 'whitespace' ... we could have pushed them to 200pp fairly easily. But why would
you do it? Why not 'cut to the chase,' get a rip-snorter of a Slim, at a very attractive price?!
MK, April 2007
EDITOR'S NOTE, May 2008
Mel's instincts have been proved 100% correct. The Slims have shown themselves to be extremely
popular, and the Lulu versions of them are among the top-sellers of the Lulu list.
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DreamCraft, MK and Jade are often asked what hosting service we use, and why. You're looking at it! Why? Best deal and best service we
ever found — been with iPower since 2002, and wouldn't dream of going anywhere else!
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