What is a Novella? Definitions and Inspiring Examples

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 18:14:17 +0000

When writing a story, one of the first questions you ask yourself is what kind of story you are writing. Is it a short story, a novel, or a novella?

While the first two are quite well-known, you might wonder, “What is a novella?”

A novella is a story that falls between a short story and a novel. It typically ranges from 20,000 to 50,000 words, although it can vary depending on genre, publishing standards, and the specific criteria set by awarding bodies such as the Nebula or Hugo Awards.

Why does defining a type of story by word count matter for publishing? Historically, novellas were a tough sell in the publishing world. They were too long to be included in most magazines or journals but too short to be published as standalone books. But the rise of digital books changed the game. Now, publishing a novella digitally is simpler and cost-effective, opening more doors for writers to express their creativity.

Apart from size, novellas stand out due to several distinct characteristics, which we will dive into in this article:

What is a Novella? Definition and Key Characteristics

The novella definition encompasses several unique characteristics that distinguish it from other literary forms, such as its length, focus, and storytelling depth. To see how novellas stand out, think about visual storytelling. Novellas are like movies: longer than a short film (short story) but more focused than a TV series (novel). This combination of short stories’ quick impact with novels’ depth makes novellas stand out from other literary forms.

To understand novellas better, let’s examine their distinctive features:

Central Conflict and Turning Points

Novellas are centered around one main conflict or event, with everything in the story connected. While pacing is important in most literary forms, it’s crucial in novellas. Novellas often balance detailed storytelling with the momentum that leads to significant turning points. This combination creates an engaging and emotionally rich reading experience.

Symbolism and Themes

Novellas usually focus on a few main themes and use symbols to enrich the story. Despite their shorter length, novellas can get really deep into their topics, making them complex without being as long as a novel.

Character Exploration and Development

Character development is crucial in novellas. The characters often face significant challenges and change a lot throughout the story. This focus makes the characters and the story feel real and relatable.

Storytelling Techniques and Structural Innovation

Novellas let writers try new storytelling methods and narrative structures. In this type of story, you can often encounter creative techniques like shifting perspectives, non-linear timelines, or developed allegories.

The Central Conflict in Novellas

Novellas usually revolve around a single main conflict. This can be a big problem or challenge that the characters that the characters work to solve. Focusing on one conflict makes the story tight and powerful, giving the readers a clear idea of what the story is about.

Let’s take The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada as an example. The story unfolds in a factory that produces unidentified products and has people do seemingly meaningless jobs. The central struggle is with the factory’s odd and sometimes ludicrous corporate culture. This setup critiques the way such a culture can make workers feel lost and doubt the significance of their roles.

The Factory showcases the gap between corporate demands and individual needs. It paints a picture of the workplace as a place that can strip away one’s sense of self and purpose. The story is a powerful commentary on contemporary work life and its effects on people and their identities.

Character Exploration and Development

Novellas allow writers to explore their characters in depth, creating detailed portraits. This makes novellas different from short stories, which don’t have much space for detail, and novels, which often have too many characters competing for attention.

For example, Breakfast at Tiffany’s gives us a close look at Holly Golightly, who seems to live a glamorous life in New York City. As the story unfolds, readers start to see her vulnerabilities and hidden desires beyond her carefree exterior. Capote uses Holly’s interactions with the narrator and other characters to peel back the layers of her facade.

Holly’s complexity is revealed through her interactions and experiences, from lavish parties to a stint in prison. We learn about her past, her dreams, and the fears she hides behind her confident exterior. This is the level of depth novellas can achieve in character development.

Pacing and Turning Points

Novellas move quickly, using fast pacing to keep readers hooked and make every part of the story count. They often have a major turning point that changes everything or reveals something important about the characters.

Passing by Nella Larsen is an excellent example of how novellas use pacing and turning points. It tells the story of Irene and Clare, two African American women navigating the racial divide of 1920s America differently. The story’s pace pulls you into their complex lives and the decisions they face.

The turning point comes when Clare’s husband discovers she is African American, changing everything for them. This moment of revelation heightens the story’s tension and leads to a powerful conclusion.

Symbolism and Themes

In novellas, symbols often express deep themes. Objects, characters, or events represent larger truths about life, society, or human nature. The concise nature of novellas means every symbol plays a critical role in weaving the narrative’s themes.

The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig is a standout example. In the story, a chess match shows a battle between different ideas and personalities. Dr. B uses chess to keep his mind healthy while alone, while Czentovic, the chess master without much creativity, represents the opposite side. With its black and white squares, the chessboard shows the battle between right and wrong, or sanity and losing one’s mind.

Stefan Zweig’s story goes beyond just a game of chess. It looks into how powerful our minds are, how being alone affects us, and how people with different views clash. This makes The Royal Game a deep story about human life, showing how novellas use symbolism to explore significant themes and questions.

Famous Novellas in Literature

Novella book covers are often as unforgettable as the stories, capturing their core themes and essence. Let’s explore some notable novellas and their unique cover designs:

Animal Farm by George Orwell

This book uses farm animals to critique the rise of totalitarianism and the corruption of ideals. Most covers feature Napoleon, a pig representing the corrupt leader, against bold and striking imagery. These visuals symbolize the themes of power and corruption, making the book easily recognizable.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

It tells the story of Gregor Samsa, who wakes up transformed into a huge insect, exploring themes of alienation and human identity. The covers often use surreal, abstract imagery and dark, moody colors, helping to capture a sense of existential angst behind the bizarre and unsettling Gregor’s transformation.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

This story revolves around two people’s deep friendship and shattered dreams during the Great Depression. Covers usually depict the main characters against the backdrop of the American landscape. Earth tones and simple imagery evoke the novella’s poignant themes and emotional depth.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Why Color Psychology is Important in Book Marketing

Color psychology in marketing is used to influence people’s emotions and decisions. Brands leverage colors color to capture people’s attention and shape their feelings about a product. For example, a bright yellow makes people feel happy and energetic, while a deep blue is calming and trustworthy.

Color psychology is especially important in book marketing. The color of a book cover can be the first thing that catches a reader’s eye, whether browsing in a store or scrolling online.

Understanding color psychology can be a powerful tool. It’s not just about picking a pretty color; it’s about choosing the right color that speaks to the reader and fits the story. This article will explore how color can attract readers and help your book stand out.

The Power of Color in Reader Perception

The role of colors on book covers is not only to provide a high-contrast background but also to make the title and your name visible. Colors play a significant role in influencing people’s emotions and decisions. This is especially true when we choose books. Each color can evoke different feelings and ideas, making it a key factor in how readers perceive a book.

Let’s look at the list of basic colors and the emotions that they commonly evoke:

Red is a powerful color that stands for love, passion, and excitement. From another angle, it can also signal danger and anger. He is a highly visible color, making it ideal for grabbing attention. The color is often used for both romance and action-packed genres.
Orange is an energetic color that blends red’s power with yellow’s friendliness and is often associated with creativity. Many humorous and innovative books use orange on their covers to attract attention.
Yellow symbolizes warmth, energy, and happiness. This is a great choice for children’s books or any cover that wants to evoke cheerfulness and optimism.
Green represents growth, health, and tranquility, suggesting a connection with the earth. It has a calming effect that works well for self-help and wellness books or stories set in nature.
Blue evokes feelings of calmness, trust, and stability. It is also the most popular color worldwide. For these reasons, blue is often chosen for non-fiction and business books.
Purple conveys mystery, spirituality, and luxury. Many fantasy and sci-fi book covers use purple, which has become associated with magic and space.
Pink reflects tenderness and romance. It’s a lighter and softer version (a tint) of red, perfect for romantic stories or topics dealing with care and compassion.
The black-and-white combination is a classic. It’s quite versatile, and it can convey either sophistication or simplicity. These colors are used across various genres for their ability to create contrast and elegance.
Brown is considered a grounded and solid color. It evokes reliability and comfort and is often used for historical fiction book covers.
Gray balances sophistication and purity attributed to black and white, respectively. Gray offers a neutral, mature backdrop that can complement any genre.

Understanding what emotions color brings helps you make your cover design more deliberate. This means you can base your choice of cover color on the story and the emotions you are trying to evoke, appealing to your potential readers.

Genre-Specific Color Trends and Their Meanings

Color is rarely used in isolation. Different book genres often use specific color palettes that resonate with their readers. Each genre is associated with certain colors whose job is to draw in its target audience.

Romance

Shades of red, pink, and pastels are the colors usually associated with romance. These colors signal the story’s focus on love and emotional connections.

Thriller/Mystery

Thriller and mystery covers typically use darker colors like black, dark blue, and grey. The choice of dark colors suggests suspense and intrigue and aims to set a serious and mysterious tone.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science fiction and fantasy covers often feature purple, blue, and metallic hues. These colors hint at otherworldly adventures and are intended to spark curiosity.

Self-Help & Inspirational

Bright greens, blues, and yellows dominate self-help and inspirational book covers. These colors are considered uplifting and are designed to evoke feelings of growth, peace, and positivity.

Historical Fiction

Historical fiction books favor earth tones like browns, deep reds, and golds, reflecting the depth of the past. These colors work well to complement stories that transport readers to the past.

Why Are Business Book Cover Designs Important?

The cover of your book is the first impression it will make to potential readers (and potential customers). It becomes your calling card in the world and can make or break your credibility. A good cover can directly impact how many copies of your book are sold. And it can also impact how likely potential customers are to work with you in other ways.

A good business book cover design will cause a potential reader to pick up your book for a closer look. A bad cover will likely have them moving on to the next book on the shelf. A good cover reinforces your expertise, too. It makes you look more professional and like you know what you’re talking about.

Here are a few other things a good business book cover design can do for you:

It attracts the right kind of reader. The imagery on your cover should speak directly to your target audience. It doesn’t need to appeal to everyone, just to the right people for your content.

Helps build your brand. Your brand as an entrepreneur should be directly linked to your brand as an author.

Gives insight into the book’s content. Your cover should give readers a hint about what they’re in for if they read the book. If your book is serious and academic, it should have a cover that matches. If it’s lighthearted and full of action items, your cover should reflect that. You get the idea.

It’s a promotional tool. Beyond your business book cover design being a promotional tool for the book itself, it’s also something you can use in other marketing materials. You can include it on things like your website, social media, and professional profiles. A good-looking cover will attract attention.

A professional book cover design is an important marketing tool. Don’t underestimate it!

Designing Your Business Book Cover

Business book cover design is both an art and a science. And unless you’re a skilled graphic designer, I highly recommend working with a professional book cover designer who has experience designing business book covers.

Book cover designers understand not only how to design an attractive cover, but also what the market is looking for when it comes to business book cover designs. They understand what readers expect.

But that doesn’t mean you should just hand over your manuscript to a designer and hope for the best. There are things you can do before you hire a designer that will help streamline the process, saving both time and money. Here are a few tips:

1. Create a Swipe File of Designs You Like

Spend some time looking through the bestseller lists on Amazon or elsewhere and look for covers that catch your eye. Save screenshots of those covers to a file. You can use a program like Evernote to include your thoughts on each cover and why it appeals to you.

Then, when you hire a designer, hand them your swipe file (or, if your file is very large, pick out the top 5–10 covers you’d most like to emulate). This will give them some immediate insight into what you’re looking for and can save hours of time.

2. Spend Time Refining Your Cover Copy

Your title and subtitle are the first things you need to make sure you’ve nailed before you start working with a designer. But you also need to create things like the copy for the back cover. Are you just going to include a description of the book? What about an author bio? Do you have endorsements or reviews from advanced copies you’d like to include?

Organize all of this information in one place so that your designer can immediately access what they need. This prevents back-and-forth communications that waste time and resources.

3. Create a “Do Not Want” List

Are there certain things you absolutely do not want on your cover? Maybe it’s a particular color palette. Or a certain typeface. Or a particular type of image. Anything could be included.

Make a list of things for your designer to avoid including. It prevents constant conversations about what the cover should or shouldn’t include, saves time on revisions, and ultimately, saves money.

4. Make Sure You Provide Your Brand Guidelines

While your book cover does not have to match your brand guidelines completely, it’s a good idea that it doesn’t clash with your established brand. Put together at least your basic brand guidelines for your designer.

This should include:

Typefaces

Color palettes

Logos

Image or photo guidelines

Keywords associated with your brand

Your book is an extension of your brand, and so the more it reinforces that brand, the better. At the very least, your book’s cover should complement your brand, even if it doesn’t match it perfectly.

Best Practices for Business Book Cover Design

While working with a designer for your business book cover design is recommended over designing your own book cover, it’s still a good idea to understand what elements are included in a good cover. This will give you more insight into why your designer might make certain choices or want to do things a certain way.

Keep It Simple

Minimalist book covers dominate in the business world. Many book covers have little more than the title, subtitle, author name, and possibly a single graphic. Some use that graphic as a focal point, while others use it as a background image.

Simplicity allows the important parts of your cover (namely, the title) to stand out. And while a minimalist book cover design might seem like it’s easy to create, it can actually be more challenging than a maximalist cover to get right. There’s little room for error.

Here are a few examples of minimalist business book cover designs:

How Clients Buy | Smart Brevity | The Nuclear Effect

Highlight Your Title

Your book’s title should be prominent on the cover. It should stand out from everything else and be readable from a distance (as it would be in a bookstore) or at small sizes (as it would be on an Amazon search results page).

Pro tip: Most non-fiction books use a short title that grabs attention, while a longer subtitle does the heavy lifting of saying what the book is actually about.

Here are a few business book cover designs that prominently feature their titles:

Hangry | The 80/20 CEO | Building a Story Brand

Pay Attention to Contrast

Contrast between the cover’s background image or colors and the text is vital to readability. Low-contrast designs are less likely to grab a reader’s attention. High-contrast business book cover designs will stand out on a crowded shelf.

Here are a few examples of business book cover designs that use contrast well:

The Power of Going All-In | Hook Point | One Hour Content Plan

Make Sure Imagery is Appropriate

The imagery on your book cover needs to be appropriate to the content of the book. If your book is about how to get more sales, then a chart showing increasing revenue makes sense. A bouquet of flowers would not make sense.

Brainstorm the images that could be related to your central topic or theme and give those to your designer. But be open to any ideas they might come up with that also fit the topic or theme. They might surprise you!

Here are a few examples of business book cover designs that feature appropriate imagery:

Build | The Power of Habit | The Visual MBA

Final Thoughts

Writing a business book is a multifaceted endeavor, blending the deep, substantive work of crafting your content with the creative task of designing a book cover that captures the essence of your expertise. Both elements are crucial in establishing your authority and expanding your influence within your niche.

Remember to give each aspect the attention it deserves. The content of your book is your message to the world, a testament to your knowledge and experience. The cover serves as an invitation to readers into the world you’ve created inside. It’s the combination of these elements that will ultimately dictate the success of your book.

As you finalize your manuscript, don’t forget to invest in a cover design that speaks just as powerfully as the words on its pages. After all, a well-crafted book cover is not just about aesthetics; it’s about making a promise to your readers—a promise of value, insight, and inspiration.

If you’re interested in working with us to publish your book, including a professionally designed cover, schedule a call today!

Fig Living Informer

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What is a Novella? Definitions and Inspiring Examples

Apart from size, novellas stand out due to several distinct characteristics, which we will dive into in this article:

What is a Novella? Definition and Key Characteristics

Central Conflict and Turning Points

Symbolism and Themes

Character Exploration and Development

Storytelling Techniques and Structural Innovation

The Central Conflict in Novellas

Character Exploration and Development

Pacing and Turning Points

Symbolism and Themes

Famous Novellas in Literature

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Book Formatting: Smart Do’s and Don’ts for Integrating Color in Print and eBooks

Let’s take a look at the potential impacts of using color in your book formatting:

Offset Printing

What is Offset Printing?

Print-On-Demand (POD)

EBooks

Takeaways

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Elevate Your Writing: 11 AI Writing Tools for Author Success

Start here.

What is AI?

Top AI Writing Tools for Fiction Authors

1. Sudowrite

2. Verb.ai

3. Rytr

4. ProWriting Aid

5. Grammarly

6. Wordtune

AI Writing Tools for Non-Fiction Writing

7. ChatGPT

8. Writesonic

9. CopyAI

10. Jasper

11. Frase IO

This article delves into how writers can navigate the nuances of eBook formats compared to print publishing:

Ebook Formats vs. Print: Understanding Reader Preferences

Mastering Formatting Controls

Consistency Across Platforms: Best Practices

Adapting to eBook Limitations While Maintaining Consistency

Future of Ebook Formats

Final Thoughts

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The Fichtean Curve: Story Structure Guide

We’ll cover:

Introduction to the Fichtean Curve

Understanding the Three Key Stages of the Fichtean Curve

Rising Action

Fantasy

Mystery

Romance

Thriller

Climax

Falling Action

Fichtean Curve vs. Traditional Story Structures

Practical Applications of the Fichtean Curve

In Films

In Literature

Why It Works

Quick Advice for Writers Who Want to Use the Fichtean Curve Structure

Conclusion

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TikTok Book Covers: How #BookTok Users are Crushing Author Promotion and Impacting Book Cover Design

Here’s what you need to know about the influence of TikTok on book covers: