I have this from an author published by Tor UK and he tells me that publishers these days don't want a book that's longer than 150,000 words because even though you have a vast market writing in English, the foreign publishers for languages that have a far smaller number of speakers have less willingness to invest money into translating and printing a tome of a book, because the cost is too great and therefore it's not worth it. Take Norway for example...if they decide to translate a 700 page book, how many of those 4.5 million people living in Norway are going to buy it? Fantasy market isn't mainstream and thus, despite a loyal and devout following, the sales in languages other than English amount to little. Long books simply don't fly with foreign language markets and publishers in English speaking countries are aware of this.
The author I have this from had had a problem at first with Tor UK (they were reluctant to take him on), because his book was originally 250K words long. They edited him down to 212K. He's got a great agent, though (I hear), but how many of us will be so lucky as that?
The author I have this from had had a problem at first with Tor UK (they were reluctant to take him on), because his book was originally 250K words long. They edited him down to 212K. He's got a great agent, though (I hear), but how many of us will be so lucky as that?