Why do anthologies contain novel excerpts?

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Why do anthologies contain novel excerpts?

Postby cmsellers » Wed Aug 10, 2016 7:51 pm

So this is something I've noticed several times recently: recent anthologies often contain excerpts from novels.

The first time I noticed it was in some yearly collections of Nebula winners. The older collections of Hugo winners (I don't know whether the newer ones still do this) simply listed the winners in the novel category, and that was back when novels were never more two-hundred-odd pages due to limits of the publishing industry. Back then, you could probably have included the whole novel, but anthologies are collections of short fiction, so merely listing it made sense to me. With these Nebula collections, half the space in the volume was taken up with part of a novel, and I can't fathom what good that does anyone.

But at least with the Nebula anthologies you have the justification of "we're trying to represent all the Nebula winners but have a page limit," even if I think the solution is rather stupid. Since that time, I've seen the inclusion of novel excerpts in three other anthologies; all science fiction, all recent. I don't know if it's unique to science fiction, or if it started in another genre and moved into SF. It might actually make some sense in non-fiction, for example. A lot of my favorite non-fiction books have essentially thematic chapters (and in some cases some of those chapters were published as standalone magazine articles which later formed the basis for the book), so in those cases excerpts should work.

But fiction doesn't work like that; the novel form doesn't work like that. Chapters in fiction generally aren't thematically self-contained enough to be satisfying on their own; there's a narrative that builds throughout to a conclusion. So including excerpts from novels in SF anthologies is baffling to me. What good is part of a novel? Presumably you want me to like it, and if I read it and like it, I'll have to obtain a copy of the novel, at which point I'll have already read part of it out of order, which may make the first part of the book disappointing, since I've already read the exciting part.

Moreover, I usually read anthologies because I want to read self-contained, high-quality, short fiction; because I'm just browsing and don't feel like committing to more than an hour of reading one story. (The exception is single-author anthologies.) Often I don't even read the novellas in anthologies (or if I own them I read them much later than the short stories and novelettes). What's the point of including novel excerpts in multi-author fiction anthologies? I just don't get it.
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Re: Why do anthologies contain novel excerpts?

Postby Marcuse » Wed Aug 10, 2016 8:31 pm

What's the point of including novel excerpts in multi-author fiction anthologies? I just don't get it.


It's cheap, zero additional effort money and publicity.
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Re: Why do anthologies contain novel excerpts?

Postby rowdyrodimus » Wed Aug 10, 2016 10:03 pm

I think Readers Digest started the whole trend, but they were smart enough to contain abridged versions of the novels instead of just giving you like the first 6 chapters of a 12 chapter title. (And strangely enough, many of the abridged versions in Readers Digest were better than having the uncut book because they would cut out worthless stuff like a 26 page recipe and detailed instructions on how a chef boiled the water for his eggs. The BS stuff that authors throw in there to up the page count and to, I don't know, seem deep or something.)
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Re: Why do anthologies contain novel excerpts?

Postby cmsellers » Thu Aug 11, 2016 12:47 am

Marcuse wrote:It's cheap, zero additional effort money and publicity.

I get how money and publicity would appeal to the authors of the books used. I don't get how it would apply to the publishers or the anthologies, or why it would be cheaper and less effort than including whole works of short fiction.
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Re: Why do anthologies contain novel excerpts?

Postby rowdyrodimus » Thu Aug 11, 2016 6:41 am

Less pages to have to print, maybe the publishers paid them to add the partial work in it to sell copies of the full work or they just needed to fill pages and didn't have enough material to use. Who knows except that I'm pretty sure we can all agree it comes down to money somehow.
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Re: Why do anthologies contain novel excerpts?

Postby Malfeasinator » Fri Aug 19, 2016 2:12 pm

It's sort of a circle jerk; its not about the immediate payoff but more of a future investment. They help promote some author, they might gain new fans, if they get new fans and more fame, then they're likely to use them again, and since the author is more famous, the anthologies can sell better.
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Re: Why do anthologies contain novel excerpts?

Postby TheSyrupNugget » Wed Nov 23, 2016 4:58 am

Plus, if the anthology and the novel are from the same publisher, I would imagine that it would benefit them to drum up interest that way. I would imagine they're picturing readers getting that chapter, being hooked (or at least curious), and then wanting to buy the rest of the book to find out how everything turns out. I know it used to work on me a lot of the time, especially when I was really into manga-- Shonen Jump would put in a preview of a new series they were translating, and I'd HAVE to find out more.

Of course, being broke and in middle school, I would go online and find scans instead of buying from the store. But still!
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Re: Why do anthologies contain novel excerpts?

Postby Twistappel » Wed Nov 23, 2016 8:30 pm

I always assumed that the publishers were in league with the Adversary, and want to make people unhappy.

Full disclosure: I may still be a tiny bit bitter about that Clive Barker anthology I bought in the mistaken belief that it was a compilation of short stories, not excerpts from his novels.
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