The latest rant over at Smart Bitches Who Read Trashy Books got me thinking.
Their complaint is about a romance publisher who is apparently increasing the font size and the margins of books by decreasing the word count.

On one hand, I can understand precisely where they’re coming from–paperback prices are up to $7 or $8 now, which is getting pretty expensive in my opinion, especially when they’re putting out so many books in hardback and trade paperback first.

However.

As far as fantasy books go, I really wish that someone would put a limit on authors. A major peeve of mine is that only a handful of authors seem to be able to complete a story in only one or even two books. Why? It’s not like it’s physically impossible to write a good fantasy story in one book. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett can do it, Charles de Lint does it–in fact he repeatedly manages to do it in short story format.

So why can’t I find single books when I go to the book store? Why is it that books always seem to be Book One in a series? And why is the series more often than not a trilogy? Is this J.R.R. Tolkein’s fault? He wrote The Lord of the Rings as a trilogy and so that’s what everyone else has to do? This is especially maddening with New Authors whom I have never read before. They’re asking me to invest in an unknown not just one book, but three–at least if I want to know how the story turns out.

Why can’t more fantasy authors do what Charlaine Harris and Steven Brust and Terry Pratchett do? Which is write a complete tale in a single book, and then write another complete tale about the same characters in another book. Mystery authors do it all the time–everything is resolved in a single book, but you get to enjoy all your favorite characters again in the next book. Why are fantasy authors incapable of the same thing? Are they so unsure of the loyalty of their fans that they want to make sure they’ve got you for a minimum of $24?

All I know is that sometimes I don’t want invest the time to read three or five or ten books. I just want to read a single book, and then move on (usually because I’ve got something else I need to be doing). Why do they make this so hard for me?