The effect of the mean free path of the ablated species to the target-to-substrate distance ratio on chemical composition and growth rate of carbon nitride films is reported. The composition of the films deposited at room temperature by ablating a glassy carbon target with an ArF excimer laser(193 nm) in 0.3 Torr ammonia was determined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. At fixed pulse energy, the nitrogen content of the films decreases while the hydrogen content remains practically constant with increasing target-to-substrate distance. When the deposition geometry is fixed, increasing pulse energy results in an increase in the nitrogen content.