The 100-Page Rule

With the sheer volume of material I have to read--books, comics, screenplays, newspapers, magazines, and ugh, don't get me started with all the ARCs and blogs and websites on my tablet--I will need at least thirteen lifetimes to get through it all. And that's if the current river of publishing would simply STOP its flow and let me catch up. Which it WON'T because it CAN'T. Between self-publishing and the stuff coming out from the major houses, publishing is a juggernaut that cannot be stopped. There's just too much stuff out there that has me foaming at the mouth to get my peepers into.

So that's why I've been forced to implement the 100-Page Rule. It's simple enough: You, the author, have 100 pages to wine me, dine me, excite me, and turn me on to your book. If you can't do it in 100, then I'm sorry, but I don't see this relationship going anywhere and I'm going to have to drop your hard work off in the local library's donation box.

Is that fair? Maybe not. I remember I was at around 96 pages when I almost dropped Bernard Cornwell's The Archer's Tale, but something made me stick with it, and I'm glad I did because it turned out to be one of my favorite books, series, and the beginning of my obsession with all things Bernard Cornwell. Maybe by shutting you down at 100 I'm missing out on you getting your stride at 101 or 102. That's certainly possible.

But there's so much AMAZING stuff out there to be read that when reading a book becomes WORK, then my mind wanders--a LOT--and I find myself wistfully wondering what the long-on-my-shelf books by authors I DO find entrancing and hypnotic are going to be like.

(Man. Reading is a lot like dating.)

A book that can't find its legs in my heart, coupled with a brain that's playing what-color's-the-grass-over-there, makes the minutes spent reading melt at a glacial pace.

Not good.

I also think that 100 pages is a perfectly acceptable rule to be judged against when the time comes that I get my own novel(s) published. So if I review your book and I throw the 100-Page flag at it, just know that I'm doing it from a Swarovski pedestal within a sugar-glass house.