Its senior editor, Lee Harris, formerly senior editor at Angry Robot, says of the venture, “It’s opening up a whole new paying market for authors who write at this length, and a whole new library for readers-like me-who love to consume their books in ‘regular,’ rather than ‘super size.’ ” The plan is for the imprint to put out three titles a month, depending on submissions and timing. The Tor.com imprint will focus on stories that might otherwise be orphaned, or else expanded into novel-length works. “You can buy, read, and fully digest a novella over the course of an evening, or a few days’ commute, on your mobile device. “We love big, fat fantasy doorstoppers as much as anyone, but we think our readers will also appreciate the faster reads,” Gallo says. The new imprint will provide a marketplace for longer works and serials without competing with the interests of its parent company. While novellas have found a new home online in webzines, few of those outlets actively seek them out.

But the contraction of print magazines in recent years has reduced the market for these longer works, without necessarily reducing demand for them. “Novellas provide the perfect blend between the stylistic concision of the short story and the engagement of the novel.” Such longer stories were common during science fiction’s so-called Golden Age, 1938–1946. “The novella is a foundational format for the speculative fiction genre,” Gallo says. The imprint, which will have its own team of editors, will take advantage of the largely untapped market for new science fiction and fantasy novellas.

Tor fiction