A novel is a long story written in prose and published as a book. The word "novel" comes from the Italian word "novella," which means "new" or "short story." This word is based on the Latin word "novella," which is a singular form of "novellus," a small version of "novus," meaning "new." According to Margaret Doody, the novel has a history that spans about 2,000 years. It began with Ancient Greek and Roman stories, Medieval chivalric romances, and Italian Renaissance novellas. The ancient romance style was later used again during the Romanticism movement in works like Walter Scott's historical romances and Gothic novels. Some writers, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, used the word "romance" instead of "novel." This should not be confused with the modern romance genre, which focuses on romantic love. M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott said that a novel shows real life in society, like in "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. A romance, however, includes any made-up story that highlights unusual or magical events. These works are still often called novels, such as "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley and "The Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien.

In China, the spread of printed books led to the creation of classic novels during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1616–1911) dynasties. An early example from Europe was "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" by Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain. Later developments happened after the printing press was invented. Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote "Don Quixote" (first part published in 1605), is often called the first major European novelist in the modern era. Literary historian Ian Watt, in "The Rise of the Novel" (1957), said the modern novel began in the early 18th century with "Robinson Crusoe."

New technology has led to novels being published in formats other than print, such as audiobooks, web novels, and e-books. Another type of non-traditional fiction is graphic novels. These comic-style stories began in the 19th century but became popular more recently.

Defining the genre

A novel is a long story that is not based on real events. In modern times, novels are usually written in a style called literary prose. The growth of the prose novel was helped by improvements in printing technology and the availability of inexpensive paper in the 15th century.

A novel may have these features:

• Fictional narrative: Novels are different from history books because they are made up. However, this rule is not always clear. In the past, writers of historical stories sometimes added made-up details to make their stories more interesting or to support their ideas. Historians also created speeches for teaching purposes. Novels, on the other hand, can describe the social, political, and personal lives of people and places in detail. For example, the novel Ông cố vấn by Hữu Mai was written as a "non-fiction" novel, meaning it recorded real historical events in a story format.

• Literary prose: Most modern novels are written in prose, not poetry. However, early European novels were influenced by long poems written in Romance languages, like those by Chrétien de Troyes in the late 12th century, and in Middle English, such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Even in the 19th century, some stories were written in verse, like Lord Byron’s Don Juan (1824), Alexander Pushkin’s Yevgeniy Onegin (1833), and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1856). A more recent example is Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate (1986), which uses 590 stanzas inspired by Yevgeniy Onegin.

• Experience of intimacy: In the 11th century in Japan and the 15th century in Europe, prose fiction created a personal connection between the reader and the story. Harold Bloom said that Lady Murasaki’s use of closeness and humor in The Tale of Genji was similar to the work of Cervantes, who is considered the first novelist. In contrast, long poems like The Odyssey and The Aeneid were read aloud to small groups, which was more personal than theater performances. Novels and prose-romances helped spread ideas about individual style, personal thoughts, and private emotions.

• Length: Today, the novel is the longest form of narrative prose fiction, followed by the novella. In the 17th century, some critics thought the romance was as long as an epic, while the novel was shorter. However, there is no clear way to define the exact differences in length between these types of stories. The writer and critic György Lukács believed that the length of a novel is connected to its goal of showing all aspects of life. According to the novelist E. M. Forster, a novel should have at least 50,000 words.

Early novels

The earliest novels include stories written in Greek and Latin between the first century BC and the second century AD, such as Chariton's Callirhoe (mid-1st century), which is possibly the oldest surviving Western novel. Other early works include Satyricon by Petronius, True Story by Lucian, The Golden Ass by Apuleius, and the anonymous Aesop Romance and Alexander Romance. These stories were often inspired by traditions like storytelling and myths, and they showed the culture, society, and politics of their time. Later, these styles influenced Byzantine novels, such as Hysimine and Hysimines by Eustathios Makrembolites. Narrative forms also developed in Classical Sanskrit in India from the 5th to 8th centuries. Notable works include Vasavadatta by Subandhu, Daśakumāracarita and Avantisundarīkathā by Daṇḍin, and Kadambari by Banabhatta. These stories were shaped by older Sanskrit plays, Indian drama, oral traditions, and religious texts.

A 7th-century Chinese story called You Xian Ku, written by Zhang Zhuo, is sometimes considered one of the earliest "romances" or "novels" from the Tang dynasty. It influenced later fictional works in East Asia.

As cities grew and printed books became more common during the Song dynasty (960–1279), oral storytelling traditions like chuanqi and huaben evolved into long, multi-volume novels written in everyday language by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).

Medieval period: 1100–1500

The development of the novel in Europe began after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1439. The publishing industry grew significantly over the next century. In the 16th century, long European works were often written in poetry.

Romance or chivalric romance is a type of story in prose or verse that was popular among the aristocracy in High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. These stories often follow a knight with heroic qualities on an adventure. What sets romances apart from other types of epic stories, like the chanson de geste, is their focus on heterosexual love and courtly manners. In later romances, especially those from France, themes of courtly love became more common.

Originally, romance literature was written in Old French, Anglo-Norman, and Occitan. Later, it was written in English, Italian, and German. By the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written in prose instead of verse.

The shift from verse to prose started in the early 13th century. For example, the story "The Romance of Flamenca" was written in prose. The "Prose Lancelot" or "Vulgate Cycle" also includes passages from that time. This collection of stories indirectly led to Thomas Malory’s "Le Morte d’Arthur" in the 1470s. Prose became more popular because it allowed writers to connect popular stories with serious historical accounts, which were often written in prose. It was also easier to translate into other languages.

Popular literature sometimes used themes from romance but with humor, satire, or exaggerated styles. Romances reworked legends, fairy tales, and history, but by about 1600, they were no longer popular. Miguel de Cervantes famously used humor to mock these stories in his book "Don Quixote" (1605). However, the modern image of the medieval period is more influenced by romance than any other medieval genre. The word "medieval" often brings to mind knights, distressed damsels, and dragons.

The term "novel" comes from the Italian word "novella," which refers to short stories. These stories were part of European oral storytelling traditions until the late 19th century. Fairy tales, jokes, and humorous stories that made a point in conversations, as well as examples used in sermons, were part of this tradition. Written collections of such stories were widely shared. These included practical guides for clerics and compilations of various stories, such as Boccaccio’s "The Decameron" (1354) and Geoffrey Chaucer’s "The Canterbury Tales" (1386–1400). "The Decameron" is a collection of 100 short stories told by ten people—seven women and three men—who fled the Black Death by escaping Florence to the Fiesole hills in 1348.

Renaissance period: 1500–1700

In the early sixteenth century, people did not clearly separate history from fiction. Many historical books from the early modern print market included strange and unlikely events. For example, William Caxton's 1485 edition of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1471) was sold as a true history, even though it included magical events and events that could not have happened. Similarly, Sir John Mandeville's Voyages, written in the 14th century but printed until the 18th century, described unusual things like one-footed Ethiopians who used their foot as an umbrella. These books were eventually seen as fiction rather than history.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, two changes helped separate history and fiction. First, the invention of printing created a new market for inexpensive books, including chapbooks, which were simple stories. By the 17th and 18th centuries, these books became more refined and were called belles lettres, a category that was neither lowbrow nor academic. Second, the first modern best-selling fiction book, Amadis de Gaula by García Montalvo, became a classic example of a romance, unlike the modern novel that began to develop in the 17th century.

During Japan’s Edo period, many new literary genres appeared, supported by growing literacy and lending libraries. Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) is often credited with creating the modern idea of the novel in Japan. His stories, such as Life of an Amorous Man, mixed everyday language with tales of love and life in the pleasure districts. These works, called ukiyo-zōshi ("floating world" stories), were popular among merchants but not considered high literature at the time.

Heroic Romance was a type of imaginative story that became popular in 17th-century France. The earliest French novel, L'Astrée (1610) by Honoré d'Urfe, was called a pastoral story. While it focused on gentle and sentimental themes, it also included a love for glory and bravery, which was common in France at the time. Marin le Roy de Gomberville later created Heroical Romances, which mixed medieval romance elements with the style of the 17th century. These stories often featured heroes who were said to be real people in disguise.

Stories about clever tricksters were common in European novellas, which had roots in older tales called fabliaux. Examples include Till Eulenspiegel (1510), Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), Simplicissimus Teutsch by Grimmelshausen (1666–1668), and The English Rogue by Richard Head (1665). These stories followed a hero’s life and often included satirical encounters with the world, showing either the hero’s suffering or their ability to exploit others’ weaknesses.

Another tradition of satirical stories began with Ring by Heinrich Wittenwiler (c. 1410) and Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (1532–1564), which mocked heroic romances by making them humorous and absurd. Don Quixote, written by Miguel de Cervantes, changed how romances were satirized by showing a hero who lost touch with reality after reading too many romantic stories.

Other important works in this tradition include Roman Comique by Paul Scarron (1651–57), the anonymous Rozelli (a satire of European religions), Gil Blas by Alain-René Lesage (1715–1735), Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1742 and 1749), and Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot (1773, published after his death).

A modern-style literary market, where fiction and poetry were sold separately, did not exist until the late 17th century. In the early 18th century, all books were grouped under the category "History and politics," including pamphlets, memoirs, travel books, political analysis, serious histories, romances, poetry, and novels.

Historians criticized the mixing of fictional and real histories since the end of the Middle Ages, calling fictions "lies." However, by the 1670s, the way stories were written changed. Works by authors like Madame d'Aulnoy and Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras used the romance format to write stories that avoided claiming to be true. This allowed authors to say their books were fiction if they faced accusations of spreading false information.

Books from the 17th and early 18th centuries often included prefaces and title pages that blurred the line between fiction and history. Some claimed to be romances but warned readers they might include real events, while others pretended to be true histories but were suspected of being entirely made up. A distinction was also made between private and public history. For example, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was neither a romance nor a novel but smelled of romance, though its preface said it should be read as a true private history.

The rise of the modern European novel, as an alternative to chivalric romance, is often linked to Pantagruel (1532) or Don Quixote (1605). Another early novel was L'Astrée (1610) by Honoré d'Urfe. The publication of Don Quixote is considered the first great novel of world literature. This was followed by Roman Comique by Scarron (1651), which showed the rivalry between French romances and Spanish novels. In Germany, Simplicissimus by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1668) was an early example of the novel.

Late 17th-century critics praised the shift in prose fiction toward the modern novel and novella. Early French works that marked this change included Scarron’s Roman Comique and Madame de La Fayette’s Zayde (1670). This led to Princesse de Clèves (1678), the first French novel with themes that became central to French literature.

In Europe, the change in literary genres was seen in French books published in Holland, which were sold internationally. English publishers used the debate over novels and romances in the 1670s and 1680s. Critics of the time praised the new genre for being short, not trying to be epic poetry, and focusing on modern life and everyday heroes.

18th-century novels

The idea of the "rise of the novel" in the 18th century is especially connected to Ian Watt's important study, The Rise of the Novel (1957). Watt believed that the 18th century saw more realistic stories in novels, which made them different from earlier stories written in prose.

The growing importance of the novel in the 18th century can be seen in the development of philosophical and experimental novels. Philosophical fiction was not new. For example, Plato’s Republic is an early example of a story about an ideal society. In the 12th century, Ibn Tufail wrote Philosophus Autodidacticus, a story about a person living alone on an island, which is an early example of a philosophical novel. In the 13th century, Ibn al-Nafis wrote Theologus Autodidactus, a story with religious ideas, which is an early example of a theological novel.

The tradition of stories that also included philosophical ideas continued with Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) and Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun (1602). However, the tradition of the philosophical novel began in the 1740s with new editions of More’s work, titled Utopia: or the Happy Republic; a Philosophical Romance (1743). Voltaire wrote in this style, as seen in Micromegas: A Comic Romance (1752), which is a sharp satire about philosophy and human pride. His works Zadig (1747) and Candide (1759) became key texts of the French Enlightenment and the modern novel.

An example of an experimental novel is Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767), which breaks away from telling the story in a continuous way. In this book, the author speaks directly to readers in both the preface and the story itself. The book also includes visual experiments, such as a marbled page, a black page to show sorrow, and a page with lines to represent the story’s plot. The novel focuses on the challenges of language and references John Locke’s ideas in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

The word "novel" became more popular than its rival, the "romance," in Spain and England. Although readers in other parts of Europe also liked the novel (or "novella") as an alternative in the second half of the 17th century, only English and Spanish writers openly criticized the romance.

However, this change in taste was short-lived. Fénelon’s Telemachus (1699/1700) showed a longing for the old romances, which focused on heroism and virtue. In 1715, Jane Barker advertised her book Exilius as "A New Romance," written in the style of Telemachus. Robinson Crusoe (1719) called its story a "romance," but in the third edition (1720), Daniel Defoe argued against people who said the story was made up.

By the late 18th century, the Romantic Movement helped bring back the word "romance." This included gothic romances and the historical novels of Walter Scott. Robinson Crusoe was now called a "novel," a type of realistic fiction that developed in the 18th century.

Sentimental novels focused on emotions, showing scenes of sadness and tenderness. The plot was designed to move readers emotionally rather than through action. These stories celebrated "fine feeling," showing characters as examples of sensitive and refined emotions. At the time, showing these feelings was thought to reflect a person’s character and help create better relationships.

An example of this genre is Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), which aimed to teach young people about virtue and religion. The story follows a servant girl who faces challenges from a man who loves her but is not of her social class. In the end, she helps change the man’s behavior.

In the 1760s, male heroes began to show the same sentimental traits. Laurence Sterne’s The Sentimental Journey (1768) features a humorous character named Yorick. Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) and Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771) created more serious examples of this type of character.

These works inspired a subculture of pornographic novels, which had models from Greek and Latin authors translated in the previous century. An example is John Cleland’s Fanny Hill (1748), which tells the story of a prostitute who becomes independent and enjoys her work. This story is almost the opposite of novels that focus on virtue.

Less virtuous characters also appear in satirical novels, such as Richard Head’s The English Rogue (1665), which includes scenes of brothels. Women writers like Aphra Behn created heroines with careers that foreshadowed the 19th-century "femme fatale."

By the 1770s, the genre evolved. For example, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) shows a young man struggling to fit into a conformist society. In Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782), Pierre Choderlos de Laclos describes aristocrats who play dangerous games of intrigue and amorality.

By around 1700, fiction was no longer mainly for the aristocracy. Printed books reached readers of all classes, though reading habits varied and following trends remained a privilege. Spain led in the 1630s, but French authors became more influential than Spanish writers like Cervantes, de Quevedo, and Alemán in the 1640s. As Huet noted in 1670, the change was in social customs. French works taught a

19th-century novels

The word "romanticism" is linked to the idea of romance. The romance genre saw a revival at the end of the 18th century with gothic fiction, which began in 1764 with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, subtitled (in its second edition) "A Gothic Story." Important gothic works that followed include Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and 'Monk' Lewis's The Monk (1796).

These new romances challenged the belief that novels should focus on realistic portrayals of life. They also made unclear the differences critics had tried to create between serious classical art and popular fiction. Gothic romances used strange or unpleasant themes, and some critics believed these topics were less important than medieval tales about knights.

Authors of this new fiction were accused of using any topic to excite, scare, or surprise readers. However, these writers claimed they were exploring all types of fictional stories. In the early 19th century, some readers believed these works revealed deeper truths about human imagination, including ideas about love, fear, and desires. These works were seen as exploring hidden human motives, and some argued that this artistic freedom showed things not previously visible.

Later works, such as the romances of de Sade (Les 120 Journées de Sodome, 1785), Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), and E.T.A. Hoffmann's Die Elixiere des Teufels (1815), influenced 20th-century psychoanalysts and inspired images used in horror films, romance novels, fantasy stories, computer games, and surreal art.

Historical romance was also important during this time. Earlier writers paid little attention to real history, but Walter Scott's Waverley (1814) changed this by creating "the true historical novel." Scott was influenced by gothic romance and worked with 'Monk' Lewis on Tales of Wonder (1801). He aimed to bring Scottish history to life, similar to how German poets revived the Middle Ages. Scott's novels focused on unusual or surprising events and used historical research combined with imagination to make history more vivid. His work attracted a wide audience and made him one of the most famous novelists of his time.

In the 19th century, the relationship between authors, publishers, and readers changed. Authors once only received payment for their manuscripts, but new copyright laws, starting in the 18th century and continuing into the 19th, allowed them to earn money from future editions of their books. Novelists also began reading their works in public places like theaters and bookshops. The market for popular fiction grew, competing with literary works. New institutions, such as circulating libraries, helped create a large reading public.

Novels began to address difficult topics, such as political and social issues discussed in newspapers and magazines. Social critics like Thomas Carlyle emphasized the importance of responsibility for both citizens and artists. Debates about the moral value of novels and ideas like "art for art's sake," proposed by writers like Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburne, became important.

Major British writers, including Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, were influenced by the romance genre, which had been revived during the Romantic period. The Brontë sisters—Anne Brontë (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre), and Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)—were notable authors in this tradition. Joseph Conrad, who published at the end of the 19th century, was called a "supreme 'romancer.'" In America, the romance genre became a serious and flexible way to explore philosophical ideas, as seen in works like Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

European novelists, such as Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, 1831; Les Misérables, 1862) and Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (A Hero of Our Time, 1840), were also influenced by the romance tradition and Romanticism.

Many 19th-century authors addressed important social issues. Émile Zola's novels showed the lives of the working class, similar to the themes explored by Marx and Engels in their nonfiction. In the United States, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) brought attention to slavery and racism. Charles Dickens's novels showed readers the harsh conditions of workhouses and child labor. Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1868/69) questioned historical facts, while Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) told a story from the perspective of a criminal. Women writers had dominated fiction from the 1640s until the early 18th century, but George Eliot was one of the first to openly challenge the role, education, and status of women in society.

As the novel became a platform for modern debates, national literatures developed that connected the past and present through historical fiction. Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed (1827) did this for Italy, while Russian and Scandinavian writers also used historical fiction.

At the same time, the future became a topic in fiction. Earlier works, like Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733) and Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826), imagined future events. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1887) and H.G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895) explored technological and biological changes. Ideas from industrialization, Darwin's theory of evolution, and Marx's theory of class divisions shaped these stories. Bellamy's Looking Backward became the second best-selling book of the 19th century, after Uncle Tom's Cabin. These works helped create the science fiction genre as the 20th century began.

20th century

James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) greatly influenced modern novelists by changing how stories were told. Instead of using a traditional narrator, it tried to show characters' inner thoughts, a method called "stream of consciousness." This term was first used by William James in 1890. Modernist writers like Dorothy Richardson, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner also used this technique. In the 1920s, expressionist writer Alfred Döblin wrote Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), which mixed fictional stories with real-life text to create a new kind of realism, different from stream of consciousness.

Later works, such as Samuel Beckett's trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), and The Unnamable (1953), and Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (1963), as well as Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973), used the stream-of-consciousness technique. In the 1960s, Robert Coover wrote stories that broke traditional ideas about time and order.

The 20th-century novel covered many topics. All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) by Erich Maria Remarque described a young German's experiences in World War I. F. Scott Fitzgerald explored the Jazz Age, and John Steinbeck wrote about the Great Depression. George Orwell's books focused on totalitarianism. Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus wrote about existentialism. The 1960s counterculture movement revived interest in mystical works like Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf (1927), and created famous books like Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Writers also explored themes like race and gender. Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996) was described as a feminist critique. Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Doris Lessing, and Elfriede Jelinek were feminist writers. The events of World War II were written about by Günter Grass in The Tin Drum (1959) and Joseph Heller in Catch-22 (1961). The Cold War influenced spy novels. Latin American writers like Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Gabriel García Márquez created a "Latin American Boom" with a style called magic realism.

The sexual revolution of the 20th century appeared in novels. D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was published in Italy in 1928, and British censorship ended in 1960. Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer (1934) caused controversy in the U.S. Books like Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) and Michel Houellebecq's Les Particules élémentaires (1998) challenged boundaries, leading to the publication of works like Story of O (1954) and Delta of Venus (1978).

Postmodern authors in the late 20th century used humor and questioned the idea of originality in art. They borrowed from existing works and focused on how language refers to itself. Novels like Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (1980), and Foucault's Pendulum (1989) used references to other texts.

Popular fiction uses clear marketing strategies, such as labeling a book's genre. Romance fiction had the largest market share in the U.S. in 2007, followed by inspirational/religious books, science fiction/fantasy, mystery, and classic literary fiction. Popular fiction may have roots in early chapbooks, which aimed to satisfy readers with simple stories. The modern romance novel comes from 17th- and 18th-century works. Adventure novels began with Robinson Crusoe (1719). Modern pornography started with 18th-century works like Fanny Hill (1749). James Bond novels are inspired by 18th-century stories. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley draws from Arthurian legends. Horror fiction began in the 19th century. Science fiction started in the 1860s.

Popular fiction authors often highlight controversial topics, unlike serious literature. Dan Brown discusses whether The Da Vinci Code is anti-Christian. Popular fiction authors also face fewer criticisms from literary critics because they have fan bases. However, the lines between popular and serious literature have become less clear due to postmodernism and adaptations of classic books in film and television.

Crime fiction became a major genre in the 20th and 21st centuries, showing both personal and societal aspects of crime. Patricia Highsmith's books explored psychology, and Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (1985–1986) used postmodernist methods. Fantasy fiction, like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), revived the tradition of European epics. Science fiction includes works like Jules Verne's adventure stories, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

21st century

A major change in this century has been the rise of novels published as ebooks and the growth of web fiction, which is mostly or only available online. A common form of web fiction is the web serial, which is different from most modern novels because it is often released in parts over time. Ebooks are sometimes also published in print. Audiobooks, which are recordings of someone reading a book, have also become common in this century.

Another non-traditional format that became popular in the 21st century is the graphic novel. A graphic novel is a fictional story told in comic-strip style and published as a book. However, the term can also describe non-fiction or collections of short stories. The word "graphic novel" was first used in the 1960s, but similar works existed earlier in the 19th century. In 1969, author John Updike told a group called the Bristol Literary Society that he believed a highly skilled artist could create a comic-strip novel masterpiece. A well-known version of the graphic novel in Japan is called manga, and these stories are sometimes published online.

Audiobooks have been available in schools and public libraries since the 1930s, and to a smaller degree in music shops. Since the 1980s, audiobooks have become more widely available, and they are now also found online.

Web fiction is especially popular in China, where it has generated over $2.5 billion in revenue. It is also popular in South Korea. In China, online literature, including web fiction, has more than 500 million readers. This means online literature is more important in China than in the United States or other parts of the world. Most books are available online, and the most popular novels are read by millions of people. Joara is South Korea’s largest web novel platform, with 140,000 writers. Each day, Joara adds about 2,400 new stories and has 420,000 works in total. In 2015, Joara earned 12.5 billion won in sales, with profits starting in 2009. The platform has 1.1 million members and averages 8.6 million page views daily (as of 2016). Joara’s users are nearly evenly split between men and women, and fantasy and romance stories are especially popular.

The growth of ebooks and web novels has led to a rapid increase in self-published works in recent years. Some self-published authors earn more money than they would through traditional publishers. However, despite the rise of digital formats, print books remain the most popular format among U.S. consumers. More than 60% of adults in the United States read a print book in the past year (as of September 2021).