The novella is a literary form that is in danger of making a comeback, according to Nouvella, the independent publisher that prints short pieces of fiction less than 40,000 words. The publishing industry is in crisis, of course, and Nouvella thinks it knows why. People want long, big, hard-to-hold books, not these short, little things. Now Nouvella has come up with an ingenious Kickstarter to stop people getting their hands on short novels before they make a toehold in the culture. The ‘kickstopper’ Shut Down Nouvella is a brilliant piece of reverse-psychology marketing. “Help us preserve the future of the Great American Novel and end the emergence of novellas.”
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Because “novellas are increasingly treated like books,” the people at GloboBooks are asking people to buy as many of Nouvella’s books as they can and ‘destroy them all’. As a piece of social media marketing for a niche publisher, it’s a perfect way to draw attention to a literary form that can be sometimes overlooked. The reverse Kickstarter campaign has a goal of $25,000.
