The most recent one requested fantasy novellas outside the Northern European tradition, with a three-month submission period. The agented percentage helps ensure quality and a manageable workload, as does the specificity of story requirements during Tor.com’s occasional open submission opportunities. The agented/non-agented submission split tends to be about 50/50.
Authors have a choice of payment: an advance or no advance but higher royalties. Tor.com prefers two books up front, although Lee admits that advances are modest. Publication can take a year, so any novellas accepted now would not be available to readers until next May. However, novella series where every book ends in a cliffhanger are not favoured, as these are most likely novels that have been chopped up. Browne’s novels may not have what everyone looks for in literature, but his short chapters ending with cliffhangers, followed by a change in point of view in the following chapter have hooked more readers than many are willing to admit. Lee is a fan of effective pacing, citing Dan Browne as a master of the craft.
Given that 70% of submitted works are rejected on the quality of the first page, it is worth mastering the form and managing expectations in the meantime. These elements and the form’s length ensure the novella is a quick read even the longer ones (35,000 words and over), which have capacity for a sub-plot. Lee maintains that the same elements which make a good novel make a good novella: good characters followed by a good plot. However, 95% of Tor.com’s output is novellas and it publishes about four of them every month. Tor.com also publish novels and novelettes with Lee defining the latter as a work of fiction whose length is between that of a short story (up to 20,000 words) and a novella (up to 40,000 words). Despite expectations allowing for such a fresh start, the business made a profit in its first year and has continued to do so. The novella imprint was created with no books and no backlist in 2014, with its first publication being Kai Ashante Wilson’s extraordinary ‘The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps’. The company, which is separate from Tor UK, was set up when owner Macmillan decided to enter the short fiction market. Tor.com has been publishing short genre works for close on a decade.
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