ZEVE@RED.RUTGERS.EDU (09/12/85)
From: Steven J. Zeve <ZEVE@RED.RUTGERS.EDU> Note : this is intended as an informational response to the message listing criteria for buying a book, not as a rebuttal of any of the criteria listed. Although I'm not keen on the novellas padded to novel length with illustrations, I did see/hear an assertion that it was a fairly recent affectation that lead to publications of novels w/o any illustration at all. What little evidence I have gathered by personal observation seems to indicate that this is true, on the other hand they never seem to have padded novellas to novel length that way in "those days". At the NASFIC, during question and answer session of one of the panels (I don't remember which one, I only made it about 4 panels all weekend and I couldn't tell you which they were if I tried) someone asked a question that was basically "Why are you trying to rip us off by printing books with larger print and then charging us the same price as you do for normal length books with smaller print? If the you didn't use that larger print the book would be smaller and we could pay less for these shorter books.". An editor/publisher responded by saying that publishers only started using the smaller print when paper costs started to go up, and that they did so to save money and keep the cost of books down, however they would prefer to print all books with the slightly larger print since they believe it is easier to read the larger print. Steve Z. -------