The Saints Go Dying is a pretty short novel, roughly 204 pages or so.

The Marinara Murders, if the first draft is anything to judge by, is only 20 pages longer. Unless I find some major major issue, as I did with the first draft of The Saints Go Dying, I doubt it will grow very much. Maybe 10 pages at the most.

I worry that these are just a little too much on the short side. As a published book, they’d either have thin spines, or big fonts. (On the flip side, I have heard that debut novels are often short, to avoid a heavy printing cost for a long novel on an untested author.)

Maybe with the rise of e-books, people won’t be able to judge a book by it’s length as readily, and it won’t be that big of an issue. And really 225 pages is a pretty good airplane-read. Start it in Seattle, finish it in San Francisco.

But I am curious. Would anyone not pick up a 225 page book because it was too short?