Ok, so I can write whatever length book I want; there must be a secret to making sales.

Well, yes, there is.

Good, honest hard work. That’s it.

The process of learning your craft and honing it to perfection never ends. There is always room for improvement and you will never come to a day where you can say that you learned all there is to know, that you can't improve any more. Ask any seasoned author; even those that have been writing successfully for years are still improving with every book they write.

All you will ever be able to say is that you have done your very best on the work you have just written and, as far as you are concerned, it is ready for marketing. And yes, by that time you will also know what length it is.

Great. Do your homework, send your work out and get started on another.

Sadly, when you have written your next book or short-short, you might find that you learned enough to know that the previous one wasn’t quite as good as it could have been. Sorry, but get used to it. That’s the way it is in this business. If it’s any consolation it does mean that you got something right – you are learning.

I’m Still Not Sure – A Short Story or a Novel?

As you progress, you will learn to judge how much space an idea is going to need. Only you know how you want to present it and build on it and only you will learn to know, before you start, whether an idea is best suited to a short, a novella or a full-length novel. To start with, it is more difficult to tell whether an idea should be a novel, a novella or a novelette but, as you get more practice, that will come easier too.

Even after all that, it is what you want, not what the market wants, that should determine what you write and how long it is. If you come up with an idea that requires a 5-600,000 word manuscript to develop it fully, it’s probably best to put it aside for now and concentrate on making a name for yourself first. It is much harder to sell a full-length novel and far more of a risk for a publisher; if your fantastic idea is going to work out the right length for a bigger market, it could be better to focus on that. However, for the most part, if you are aiming to build a career up, then concentrate on what you need to do and write to become a great writer than on what you think is going to sell.

But I Still Don’t Know How to Break Into Print!

If you read both parts of this series, then yes you do.

There are five steps and each one is as important as the last or the next:

Write

Do your homework on the markets

Send your work out

Write some more

And then write more