A song of Ice and Fire and Word Count

[Miskatonic]

I've looked at the total amount of words in Martin's books and they are far greater than what quite a few sites tend to recommend (The 100k range usually, where as two of Martin's books are 4 times that). Is the success of his books opening up the possibility for fantasy writers (especially those who are relatively unknown) to write longer length books without publishers being hesitant to work with the author?

 

[FifthView]

Brandon Sanderson also tends to break the 100K limit by quite a bit.

My general understanding is that great track records allow established authors to get away with it--more often.

But with self-publishing on the ascent, indie authors probably have far more leeway now. Issues of bloat are still a consideration, for both indies and non-indies.

 

[Russ]

I've looked at the total amount of words in Martin's books and they are far greater than what quite a few sites tend to recommend (The 100k range usually, where as two of Martin's books are 4 times that). Is the success of his books opening up the possibility for fantasy writers (especially those who are relatively unknown) to write longer length books without publishers being hesitant to work with the author?

I agree with Fifthview. Authors with a good track record get all sorts of leeway that unbranded authors don't.

While I always enjoy discuss of GRRM's work one needs to be constantly aware that he had a massive track record before this current series, was extremely well known in the industry and IIRC had his first Hugo nomination about 40 years ago.

The indy world does indeed offer more flexibility. I am not sure what data is available on length vs. sales for unbranded authors, but on a purely anecdotal level I am often leery of starting a massive tome by an unknown. It seems a big investment to make in an unproven endevour.

 

[qWirtzy]

The longer the book, the longer the career behind it needs to be. Tragic! This will only change on the indie scene if we decide to change it IMHO. Make long--or short!--interesting stories, and people's perceptions may change. Bloat is a big concern, when someone hefts an untested author's tome, but as more and more people go digital to publish, the "big honkin' novel" effect dwindles. As far was I'm concerned, if something's engrossing, I'll keep reading it. I love that bittersweet feeling when I realize a really long book is coming to an end. But if you want to shop to publishers, 100k and under is a good rule.

 

[Russ]

If you are shopping in the spec fic realm I would suggest you are pretty safe up to 125k words.

 

[FifthView]

I'm a little opposite Russ when it comes to picking out books. If the page count listing is under 300 pages, I usually won't buy it if I'm unfamiliar with the author. I like reading hefty tomes–on Kindle, nowadays, so metaphorically hefty–and personally am not a great fan of unusually short books.

I haven't had a particularly good experience finding great indie books, anyway. A poorly written 300-page book and a poorly written 600-page book are pretty much the same for me: I'm going to stop reading after the first 60-75 pages probably, either way.

The Kindle phenomenon is interesting in the way that size is somewhat vague if you don't first check out the # pages listed on Amazon for the book.

 

[Miskatonic]

I looked at the word count of LOTR and a couple of the ASoIaF books are the same length as all three Tolkien books combined.

 

[Gurkhal]

I've looked at the total amount of words in Martin's books and they are far greater than what quite a few sites tend to recommend (The 100k range usually, where as two of Martin's books are 4 times that). Is the success of his books opening up the possibility for fantasy writers (especially those who are relatively unknown) to write longer length books without publishers being hesitant to work with the author?

I'd say no. GRRM is such a giant and known author that while he, and other giants in the field, can write books which are long and breaks many rules, new authors shouldn't expect the same kind of treatment untill they've earned it in the eyes of the publishers. You can try and I wish you the best of luck, but I wouldn't count on it.

 

[Heliotrope]

I do think (don't lynch me) that GRRM books could probably be cut by at least 20% without effecting the story.

 

[Mythopoet]

"Opening up"? Um, no. Because you see fantasy series with large word counts have the norm for a long time, including back in 1996 when A Game of Thrones was published. The word count of A Game of Thrones is quite close, for instance, to the word count of The Eye of the World published 6 years earlier. And The Way of Kings, published in 2010, has a word count higher than three of the ASoIaF books.

Honestly, I have not heard of publishers being unwilling to work with authors because they write long fantasy novels. I'm pretty sure it's expected, at least in epic fantasy. Long volumes in long series has been the norm for epic fantasy since the 70s.

 

[Incanus]

I don't know, I've been reading large-sized fantasy books for decades. Many were the first published by the author, or are otherwise their best known. It's pretty common in fantasy, and many pre-date ASoIaF.

I can come up with quite a few, right off the top of my head.

Well at World's End
Lord of the Rings (written as one book, intended to be published as one book.)
Thomas Covenant (first three books published at once.)
Gormenghast books
Sword of Shannara
Wizard's First Rule
Magician (Feist's first book, sometimes published as two)
Eye of the World
Runelords
All of Tad William's series'
Malazan books
Sanderson's books
Name of the Wind
The Blade Itself (not huge, but not short)

 

[Ban]

I often hear that you should keep your stories relatively short in order to become published, but the most critically acclaimed fantasy books seem to all be behemoths. So how does that work? Why wouldn't publishers prefer long books if those are the ones that receive such amounts of attention. For me it's not a problem, i tend to prefer short chapters and books, but can anyone explain?

 

[Russ]

I often hear that you should keep your stories relatively short in order to become published, but the most critically acclaimed fantasy books seem to all be behemoths. So how does that work? Why wouldn't publishers prefer long books if those are the ones that receive such amounts of attention. For me it's not a problem, i tend to prefer short chapters and books, but can anyone explain?

Economics is the reason from the publisher perspective.

Making a larger book is simply more expensive and riskier with a debut author who they don't know will sell or not.

On the other hand readers won't buy something too short as they feel they are not getting their money's worth for a very thin book.

So the industry seeks to hit the "sweet spot" with unbranded authors in particular. A book big enough to make readers think they are getting half decent value and short enough to contain production costs.

Or that is the simple analysis.

If you talk to editors, agents and publishers they will tell you that for a book from an unbranded author hitting the "sweet spot" enhances your chance of selling your book to a traditional publisher.

A few years ago the standard advice used to be if you are going to vary from the sweet spot, go long and a good editor will help you cut it down to a proper size. Now, editors are working harder and not engaging in that kind of rebuild nearly as often and thus publishers expect a pretty lean, better quality product from the get go.

 

[Ban]

Thank you Russ. I would "thanks" your post but apparantly i have given too much thanks already. Guess i'm just thankful.

 

[MineOwnKing]

Manuscripts under 140,000 are typically published as is.

More than that will run the risk of in-house editors streamlining chapters.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

Thank you Russ. I would "thanks" your post but apparantly i have given too much thanks already. Guess i'm just thankful.

Which is nice because Thanksgiving in the US is tomorrow. (Not sure if you were aware or if that was the joke).

 

[Russ]

Thank you Russ. I would "thanks" your post but apparantly i have given too much thanks already. Guess i'm just thankful.

You are welcome.

 

[Ban]

Which is nice because Thanksgiving in the US is tomorrow. (Not sure if you were aware or if that was the joke).

I thought thanksgiving was already over. I am not very up to date on the holiday dates on the other side of the pond. On another note, i Just became a lore master!

 

[Heliotrope]

Thanksgiving was in Canada a few weeks ago. It can be confusing.

Congrats on becoming Lore Master

 

[Ban]

Thanks are given merrily once more! (this thread has been severely derailed hasn't it?)

Edit: False alarm, Thanks are depleted once more