From roughly 1923 and Hugo Gernsback's publication of Amazing Stories magazine, the pulps reigned supreme: monthly newsstand magazines publishing short stories and serializing novels. Prior to the early 1920s the genre didn't really exist in its current form. Let's take SF and fantasy novels published in the USA as a case in point. It looks obvious at first - novels are the length they are because, well, they're novels - but in truth, the length of a novel varies depending on the prevailing publishing industry distribution model when it's written. Why isn't that story coming out in a single binding? In contrast, as I mentioned in my last blog entry, I've got a book coming out this month which is actually not a stand-alone novel, although that's what it's listed as in the publisher's catalog - it's the sixth (and final) installment in a multi-book story, six volumes long. Back in the mid to late Victorian period, when books were frequently printed and sold as weekly serials, in chapter-sized magazines that could be bound together, the length of a book was really dictated by the author's (and printer's) stamina.
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