This article in the Guardian, Are books getting longer, shows that in both commercial bestseller lists and literary lists (measured by Booker Prize winners), the books that feature are tending to get longer. But this goes against a number of trends which you would expect to be pushing readers in the opposite direction. Read more
Bestsellers

'Never use a metaphor and then explain it'
'For God's sake, never use a metaphor and then explain it...
You can assume a world from so little and readers will. So I'm more interested economy than encyclopaedism, in how little you can get away with rather than how much you can cram in...
I don't want to write puzzle stories that can be decoded to the correct answer... Read more