Novellas in romance are enormously popular today. This can be particularly attractive to readers looking for a well written story that will not take an excess of pages to reach a satisfying conclusion. Other authors also note the benefits of novellas, in particular the clarity of form the novella forces: “the demands of economy push writers … to remain focussed on the point of their creation and drive it forward with functional single-mindedness, and to end it with a mind to its unity.” (McEwan). As Susanna Carr, romance novelist and blogger, points out, novellas are a form of instant gratification, a quick injection of satisfying romance. What, precisely, qualifies as a novella? In romance, any short work of between around 20,000 to 40,000 words qualifies as a novella, with novels being at least 45,000 words in length (Carr).

Here, we will explore the contributing factors to the growing popularity of romance novellas in this period: increased economic feasibility for publishers with the advent of digital publishing, advantages for authors, and increased demand from readers who are able to make their desires known to the market through modern media. After the dip in popularity of novellas in the late 20th century, the form took off once more in the transformed publishing world of the 2010’s, authors, publishers and readers alike turning to novellas as a short, snappy fix to a romance craving. In particular, the mass market romance fiction industry has taken advantage of the growing feasibility of novellas as a profitable product in the past few decades.

Novellas have had a rich and somewhat tumultuous history, one which has reached a new era with the increasing use of ebooks and the lowered cost of binding for shorter books. The Growth of Romance Novellas in the 2010’sīetween the short stories of serials and the full length books on library shelves there lies a grey space, works too long to be put in an anthology or magazine but too short to merit the descriptor of novel.

The Pursuit Of... by Courtney Milan