So the new Harry Potter book is over 30% longer than the previous book, which was itself much much longer than the previous books in the series.
In fact, the page lengths for the first four books are (for the U.S. hardcover editions):
Book 1: 309 pages
Book 2: 341 pages
Book 3: 435 pages
Book 4: 734 pages
See the trend? (BTW, Book 5 must be close to 1000 pages long!)
So anyway, why exactly is J. K. Rowling doing this? Surely she is commanding any price she desires for writing the books–she’s not getting paid by the word, is she?
It’s just been my experience that most series consist of books that are somewhat consistent in length. An example off of the top of my head would be the Chronicles of Narnia series.
Rowling claims that she’s got the broad details of the plot for the entire series worked out, and has since the beginning. I don’t know of any way to prove that, but I suspect that, in general, it’s true – she’s done a pretty good job of tying in plot points from the earlier novels and does actually seem to be going somewhere with it. What she seems to be doing is drowning in details. I really thought that GoF needed some serious editing; there were parts that dragged, details that went on too long, etc.
I think it’s just that her popularity has led to her desire to fill out the plots of all the various characters that people like, and just to get people to spend more time with them. She is creating her own world, after all; and authors who do that can write basically forever (see Tolkien, Herbert, etc.). Sometimes they sort of lose control, and at this rate Book 6 won’t be out until 2008 and will be 1800 pages long. She ought to take a page from Lemony Snicket, finish the canon books, and then write thousand-page compendiums for the rest of her life!
I think she’s been compelled to write longer and longer books because the time frames of the books are inflexible – each covers exactly one school year – and it’s only natural that they’ll lengthen as Harry gets older and his world gets more complex. She probably didn’t plan for them getting quite this long, but it would be hard for her to change the structure of the series now.
Industry gossip is that this at least partly the case. And what’s more, she’s probably right in a way. Readers who are already in love with her world will enjoy extensive, highly detailed discussions of minutia that would have bored them if they hadn’t already been drawn in and turned into fans.
It’s parallel to the Lord of the Rings phenomenon. Originally, no one would publish Tolkien’s long, solemn telling of stories of the Elder days–and if anyone had published them, they would have bombed. But after the trilogy became so popular, anything he could write about Middle Earth was suddenly a gold mine, and lots of people would buy it (and read it and even enjoy it–although many would buy it, try to read it, and be disappointed).
I admit, I can’t help thinking that if HP5 is all by itself as long as the entire Ring trilogy, though, it would probably benefit from a little pruning.
The Gunslinger was a little over 200 pages double-spaced and in large font.
Drawing of the Three was 300-400 pages
Wastelands and Wizard and Glass were in the 600-700 range I think. I read the paperback of these books so I wouldn’t really know hardback stats.
Though King was in a different position than Rowling. He stated numerous times that he picks up ideas here and there and makes the story up as he goes (the first book was written almost 30 years ago).
—I admit, I can’t help thinking that if HP5 is all by itself as long as the entire Ring trilogy, though, it would probably benefit from a little pruning.—
Well, the HP books DO have big fonts, while Tolkien’s publishers tend to cram a lot on a page.
Which is an interesting issue. As some crazed fan discovered with the Wheel of Time series, the actual page length of a book can vary tremendously simply by increasing or decreasing the font size on a page (earlier WOT books were actually much longer, and the later ones are shorter, but with bigger fonts so that the difference doesn’t seem to drastic)
I heard rather the opposite (my sister is an author published by HarperCollins): Rowling was actually supposed to have been annoyed with the rushed time demands for Book 4, and was pissed it hadn’t been tightened up more before publication. So she took her sweet time putting out Book 5 to make sure it was more solid.
Don’t forget, this is a series aimed at kids - her target audience is growing up, and are able/willing to read more. Instead of Mom/Dad reading a chapter or two at bedtime, they are reading it themselves.
Bottom line is, she’s getting kids to read and enjoy 1000 page books, and really, who has a problem with that?
