Excellent to hear of people writing books! One thing I think is relevant is that children (ND ones as well as gifties) often seem to have a phase in which they can read, but long books are off-putting. That's what tends to suggest splitting a long book up. *But* the downside is that once they're past that phase, long books are much more attractive to those who do the buying, chiefly parents. E.g. DS7 recently chose
this book from a school book fair, and literally read it on the bus on the way home. No way am I going to buy books that length for him! Anything I buy is going to keep him quiet for longer than that :-) I'm no good with word numbers, but that book was 134 pp with fairly large print, maybe 15k words? If something looks shorter than that, I'm not even going to pick it up (DS wouldn't either - in a shop with a wider variety of things than the school book fair, he too looks at big books these days); so one long book if I'm the target buyer!
I don't know Magic Treehouse, but I often hear about it being an early choice for newly-independent readers. It sounds as though you're not going for that market?
