# High word count expectation is not fair!



## ClearDragon (Aug 19, 2020)

All the publishers I've looked at want at lest an eighty thousand word manuscript, some want one hundred thousand or more, and are not considering shorter ones. I don't know if I can write a manuscript that long. When I finished my first book, I began reviewing and revising it. I found many things that I could describe with fewer words. I also removed a whole two thousand word scene because it didn't fit with what came before and after it. I also removed a large conversation between two characters because it didn't do anything for the story and was kinda dull. Then when I reworked all the dialogue, it lessened the word count more. In the end it went from sixty five thousand words, which was already too short, to forty one thousand words which is apparently of no interest at all!
What was I supposed to do? Have everything way drawn out and use as many words as possible?


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## Steerpike (Aug 19, 2020)

40,000 is more in the novella range. Maybe look at publishers who take those.

I think it is as much a marketing concern as anything. If your book is sitting on the shelf looking thin next to whatever Brandon Sanderson or other writers with established name recognition are also selling, it might be a harder sell.  Even against unknown authors, a consumer might feel they're getting more for their money from a longer work. I think publishers believe fantasy audiences gravitate toward longer works, so that's what they want, as a rule.


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## skip.knox (Aug 19, 2020)

Arguably there's not enough story at forty thousand. Take a look at novels you like, ones that are in the same genre. Do they have sub-plots? Do they have more dialogue or more exposition than yours? How many main characters are there? None of those things by themselves are key, but it can get you looking in the right direction.

Similarly, look at twenty of your favorite books. How many of them weigh in under fifty thousand words? Novellas do have a market, but it's a tiny one.

Finally, have you sent your book to beta readers? If you do, be sure to ask them if they think the book is long enough and if not, what they'd like to see more of. 

Without knowing more about the book, that's about the best I can suggest.


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## Steerpike (Aug 19, 2020)

Seems like expectations have changed with time, too. Thinking about the first Elric books, or Zelazny’s first Amber books. Those couldn’t have been more than 40-50k.


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## Svrtnsse (Aug 19, 2020)

Novellas are great (says the guy who enjoys writing them).


Steerpike said:


> Seems like expectations have changed with time, too.


This is probably true. I have a hunch the expected word count might be crawling back down, but I've got nothing to back that up with, and even then it's probably still above 100k words for epic fantasy.

According to kindlepreneur (How Many Words Are in a Novel? Here's a Breakdown of 15 Top Genres.), the average word count for books (in the top 100 liste on Amazon) in the fantasy genre is 109k words.

So, what to do if your book doesn't fit that range and the story is done and you're not going to rewrite it to add more details?
Two options:
1. Find an agent/publisher who's willing to take on shorter length books.
2. Publish it yourself.


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## Insolent Lad (Aug 19, 2020)

Right now, I'm concerned that I've overshot the 4000 word target for my beginners' chapter book. Every genre has its demands!


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## Prince of Spires (Aug 19, 2020)

ClearDragon said:


> What was I supposed to do?


As Svrtnsse mentions, self-publish it. Large publishers go with what works for them and over the years, word counts have crept upwards. Novella's are of no interest to them, which leaves self-publishing as the main alternative. Don't try to add unescessary words to your work, it usually makes it worse (and a common writing advice is that editing should in most cases decrease the word count of your work).

Also, write the next book. After your first book, you should have a better idea of your process and what kind of story you like to tell. Use that and either keep writing novellas or decide you want to write longer works and do that. 

If you want to write a longer piece of work then you can try to 
- add more characters, especially viewpoint characters. They get more scene's and make stuff more complicated, which increases word count. Just make sure all characters actually do something, have a reason to exist. 
- add more sub-plots or complications to your main plot. Especially useful if you're also adding characters.
- add more locations. Again, increases the potential for more sub-plots and characters.


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## Leonardo Pisano (Aug 26, 2020)

Hmmm, in the Netherlands the usual advice is to limit to 80-90K words, especially for beginners. This not genre specific AFAIK. The reasoning is that nowadays books are sold online and the 80-90K doesn't have to be sent as a parcel, as it fits the letter box ... 

Come to think of it, I like tightly written novels. Maybe you can write another one and offer both stories as one book?


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## Malik (Aug 27, 2020)

skip.knox said:


> Arguably there's not enough story at forty thousand. Take a look at novels you like, ones that are in the same genre. Do they have sub-plots? Do they have more dialogue or more exposition than yours? How many main characters are there? None of those things by themselves are key, but it can get you looking in the right direction.



This is the thing. What defines a novel is not the number of words. I touched on this in another thread, but a novel is a fictional narrative reflecting on social, political and personal realities through the employment of literary devices: theme, subtext, tone, exposition, chemistry, foreshadowing, imagery, allegory, all that stuff that some of us (myself included) snoozed through in third-year theory. 

This is why novels are long: there's a lot going on in there. 

There is a considerable difference between a novel and a novel-length story. You need to go back and look at the contingencies of your rhetoric and figure out what you're trying to say with your 40,000-word story. Once you have that and you start punching it up with secondary and tertiary themes, subtexts, side plots, etc.--all the things that make your point--it'll blow itself out to novel length in no time, I promise. You'll be cutting literary devices out by the time you're done.


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## skip.knox (Aug 27, 2020)

>What defines a novel is not the number of words.
I get what you're saying, but if I tell readers they're getting a novel and charge accordingly, and it weighs in at 40k, there's going to be some irate readers. So novel in that sense is about quantity. You're talking about quality. And, what is quality, after all? (*nods to Robert Pirsig*)


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## Insolent Lad (Aug 28, 2020)

'Novel' is an arbitrary designation for a type of story. Word count is as good a way to define it as any. My shortest was just over 40,000, my longest around 210,000, and I call both novels. That's how many words it took to tell each story, and that's that as far as I'm concerned. Naturally, the shorter one costs less!


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## Malik (Aug 30, 2020)

skip.knox said:


> >What defines a novel is not the number of words.
> I get what you're saying, but if I tell readers they're getting a novel and charge accordingly, and it weighs in at 40k, there's going to be some irate readers. So novel in that sense is about quantity. You're talking about quality. And, what is quality, after all? (*nods to Robert Pirsig*)



Fair point, but a novel shouldn't weigh in much under 40K, unless you're Arthur Miller reincarnated, because otherwise there's slim chance you're going to get the defining components of a novel wrapped up in 150 pages.

Novels are long not because the stories are long, but because the stories are deep. You cite Persig, but _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance _was 416 pages.

Novels aren't made of words. Novels are made of the stuff I talked about above: theme, metaphor, allegory, imagery, symbolism, subtext, commentary, chemistry, characterization, story, plots and subplots, exposition, complication, hyperbole, foreshadowing, paradox, irony, allusion, tone, personification, juxtaposition, control of narrative distance . . . The words just hold all that stuff together in the shape of a book.

You can put ten thousand nails in a pile of boards and while it remains an impressive feat, it doesn't mean you've actually built anything.


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## ThinkerX (Aug 30, 2020)

apart from 'Lord of the Rings' and a couple others, most of the old line pulp fantasy/sf novels were on the order of 50-60,000 words: 'Witch World' and successors, 'the individual 'Earthsea' books, the 'Unbeheaded King,' and quite a few others.  Those books did credible jobs of creating entire worlds with complex societies and characters.  Those works, though, date from half a century ago.

I see a lot of 'indy' works in the 200 page range (roughly 60,000 words) that range from fantastic to...not very good.


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## ClearDragon (Sep 5, 2020)

Well, thanks for the advice people.
I'm going to see about publishing it as a novella. I'm also working on my second book that I hope to make about three times longer.


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## Svrtnsse (Sep 5, 2020)

ClearDragon said:


> Well, thanks for the advice people.
> I'm going to see about publishing it as a novella. I'm also working on my second book that I hope to make about three times longer.


One thing I've found, both in my own writing, and with a lot of other authors (especially if they write series), is that the books just get longer and longer, they rarely get shorter.


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## ClearDragon (Sep 5, 2020)

Svrtnsse said:


> One thing I've found, both in my own writing, and with a lot of other authors (especially if they write series), is that the books just get longer and longer, they rarely get shorter.



I've seen that a lot too.
My first book is like an introduction the my fictional universe, the second one has a much more in depth story.


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## Demesnedenoir (Sep 9, 2020)

One underlying issue is that word counts matter for people without a name... If you’re a famous writer and write a book at 40k they might gobble it up, same goes for the opposite end of the spectrum. If you write a 200k word behemoth as a no name, they’re going to pass (in general, exception always happen). The truth is, if you are an unknown and agents/pubs see a really low word count or a really big word count, they’re going to assume problems with your story. That is part of the story, anyhow. The other would figure into profitability in trad, where print still rules their concerns. Once you go over 120k, a new mental barrier appears for agents and pubs.


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## Ban (Sep 9, 2020)

Leonardo Pisano said:


> Hmmm, in the Netherlands the usual advice is to limit to 80-90K words, especially for beginners. This not genre specific AFAIK. The reasoning is that nowadays books are sold online and the 80-90K doesn't have to be sent as a parcel, as it fits the letter box ...
> 
> Come to think of it, I like tightly written novels. Maybe you can write another one and offer both stories as one book?



Hijacking the thread, but I love this. I'm a Dutchman myself and wasn't aware of this. The idea of restricting book sizes not on the basis of some inherent standard or expectation of quality, but the ability to fit the product through a letterbox is so incredibly Dutch. Efficiency first, art second.


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## Demesnedenoir (Sep 9, 2020)

The size of mass market paperbacks is (if I’m not mistaken) based on fitting into the grocery line, heh heh.

But big books are absolutely not so much a quality issue as the cost to produce. The old standard notion was that the book buying populace didn’t want to pay more for a super-thick book, which costs much more to produce. The typical buyer wanted to pay X for a book, and no more than X, so, pubs lost profit margin with thick books. THEN there was an explosion of big thick book popularity, and suddenly they printed not-so-thick books in really big fonts to make them bigger on the shelf! Then, that trend went away, and we have what we have, heh heh.


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## Chessie2 (Sep 10, 2020)

Eh. Your story need only be as long as it wants to be. Not every story in your head will be a long one.


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## ClearDragon (Sep 20, 2020)

Chessie2 said:


> Eh. Your story need only be as long as it wants to be. Not every story in your head will be a long one.



Seems reasonable to me, but most publishers disagree


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## skip.knox (Sep 20, 2020)

ClearDragon said:


> Seems reasonable to me, but most publishers disagree



Which is reason #43 why I self-publish rather than go through traditional outlets.


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## Meep (Sep 27, 2020)

I write kidlit (mostly) and the general range is ~40,000-70,000 for middle grade. 
But if you write for adults/general market, you can try places like Tor.com (closed indefinitely but supposedly plan to reopen eventually) and The Fantasist (you can join their mailing list for info on when they're open for subs). 

Submission Grinder lets you search currently open markets and filter by word count/payment per word/(sub)genre/etc. I punched in 50,0000 words as a sample and there's a p long list of open markets right now.

It's true that big, mainstream publishers tend to want long, long, long for fantasy books, but that's not the only place to publish if you don't want to go the self-publishing route.


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## Cargoplayer (Oct 18, 2020)

There is nothing fair or not fair about it. It’s what’s being asked for by the company who is going to pay you an advance, then put all their power of marketing, manufacturing and distribution behind you. They don’t have to be fair in this regard, they are purchasing something, and have said what they want. When I was younger and still sending in paper queries, they were very clear on paper type, font, spacing, and content. People still insisted on sending things in on purple paper, with cursive fonts, because they felt they should stand out. From all accounts I’ve read, those went straight to trash.

You have to remember that the people with the slush pile, while they are looking for things that would work, are also ready to take your stuff and toss it. If you don’t fit the requirements they’ve put out, you’re going to be done at the start. There are lots of more folks in that slush pile. So look for markets that fit your writing output, or do something different.


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## Malik (Oct 18, 2020)

Cargoplayer said:


> then put all their power of marketing, manufacturing and distribution behind you.



Wow, how do I break this to you . . .


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## Cargoplayer (Oct 18, 2020)

Malik said:


> Wow, how do I break this to you . . .


In theory, they are going to put their power of marketing behind you.....


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## Malik (Oct 18, 2020)

Cargoplayer said:


> In theory



There we go.


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## Devor (Oct 18, 2020)

Publishers fight for their catalogues and that's nothing to sneeze at exactly.  But they don't really fight for individual books. Being in the catalogue of a big name publisher might get a book 30 seconds of attention from a wholesale buyer at B&N, for example. It's not a lot but how else do you get those thirty seconds?


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## Malik (Oct 18, 2020)

Devor said:


> how else do you get those thirty seconds?



Pretty much the only reason I'm shopping my next series.

I've run the numbers again and again. I'd lose money signing to a major publisher unless I land a Netflix series as a result. 

OTOH, it's likely that more people would read my stuff if I had a huge NY publisher advocating for me, even if they only do so parenthetically, as part of their catalog.


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## Demesnedenoir (Oct 18, 2020)

Anecdotally, another indie author who has struck it rather bigger than me, lost money (6 figures) by going trad up front, but on the backside, they increased their readership to such a degree that it paid off in the long run. Now, last I knew, they pretty much run as a hybrid. The one major sticking point they had was that the Pub (almost seems like the imprint was Orbit?) didn't want to pay much for the audio rights, and therefore, I think the author flipped back indie on their new series. And the series was a 7 figure deal, or high 6, if I recall correctly. There's no way to prove this, just the word of the author. But, I will shop my next standalone and series on the back of award wins and pro reviews. 



Malik said:


> Pretty much the only reason I'm shopping my next series.
> 
> I've run the numbers again and again. I'd lose money signing to a major publisher unless I land a Netflix series as a result.
> 
> OTOH, it's likely that more people would read my stuff if I had a huge NY publisher advocating for me, even if they only do so parenthetically, as part of their catalog.


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## joshua mcdermott (Nov 17, 2020)

I am also in the novella range.. i actually do NOT like the overblown prose of many fantasy books which seems only to be there to add word count.  I do not think that a 40k book cannot tell a story- just as you say-  Moorcock and Zelazny did just fine- and arguably much better for it.  

but publisher wise they want a thick tome so they can charge $10.  I am not so sure why not charge $3 for a smaller book.. ?


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## Malik (Nov 17, 2020)

joshua mcdermott said:


> but publisher wise they want a thick tome so they can charge $10.  I am not so sure why not charge $3 for a smaller book.. ?



Because you're screwing yourself if you charge less, but that's a conversation for another time and place. If you want to talk pricing strategies, start a new thread. I've got plenty to say about it.


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## Demesnedenoir (Nov 19, 2020)

Profit margins on print books tend to go down, which is part of the reason huge books from unproven authors are scarce in trad.



joshua mcdermott said:


> I am also in the novella range.. i actually do NOT like the overblown prose of many fantasy books which seems only to be there to add word count.  I do not think that a 40k book cannot tell a story- just as you say-  Moorcock and Zelazny did just fine- and arguably much better for it.
> 
> but publisher wise they want a thick tome so they can charge $10.  I am not so sure why not charge $3 for a smaller book.. ?


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## Puck (Oct 28, 2021)

ClearDragon said:


> All the publishers I've looked at want at lest an eighty thousand word manuscript, some want one hundred thousand or more, and are not considering shorter ones



Terry Pratchett's discworld novels were often less that 80k.  In fact the first couple were under 60k I think.

Therein lies the problem with traditional publishing - it is a conservative business (I know, I used to work in it - not in fiction though).

Publishing has become gradually more corporate and risk averse in recent years I think and this kind of thing is a symptom of that.  Publishers want stuff they know will sell and that means (unfortunately) "more of the same".  New and different = risk.  But, alas, you need to play the game if you want to go down the trad publishing road.

Don't get me wrong, I bet there are some people in those publishing companies who'd love to "go rogue" and publish something different that doesn't conform to the "rules" - but its a big risk to take.  The only people in publishing companies who'd be more inclined to take such a risk would be anyone whose recently discovered a best selling author - as their star will be on the rise with the corporate powers that be they will have more leeway to take a few risks and break a few rules.  [that advice is probably more use to agents than writers though, as they will be more likely to have the contacts and know who those people are at any one point in time].


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## Prince of Spires (Oct 29, 2021)

I'm wondering if it's only about being conservative or simply decent business sense. There's only a limited number of books a publisher can publish per year. They get 10's of thousands of manuscript submissions per year. If you need to chose 10 books to publish out of that and it's a low margin business, will you pick the ones that you "know" will sell enough to make your money back and then some or will you take a chance on something which may or may not do well? 

With a traditional publisher the financial risk lies with the publisher. In that situation you can only afford so many misses before you go out of business. I can imagine that you play safe in such a case and have a very limited nr of spots available for wild cards which do something different.


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## Puck (Oct 29, 2021)

Prince of Spires said:


> I'm wondering if it's only about being conservative or simply decent business sense



It is a bit of both.  Publishing is a low margin business as a general rule, so you can't afford to take too many risks.  Many of the big publishers have also struggled to adapt to the digital world & took a good while to get that side of things right (some might still be behind the curve on that even now).  Covid did not help with book retailers being closed for potentially long periods of time in some countries.  The group that owns Orbit saw its revenues decline at little in 2020, so they are under a squeeze.

Unfortunately what it does tend to mean is that trad publishing cannot afford to take too many risks on anything new/different/potentially ground-breaking.

So, if you are looking for first time authors for epic fantasy, that means you are mostly looking for novel lengths that you know will sell, themes and story types that you know will sell and so on. i.e. more of the same.

That _may_ mean that, over time, trad publishers end up being conservative businesses that follow trends rather than set trends.  If that happens, that might increasingly mean that readers will need to look at indie to find anything genuinely new/ground-breaking/trend setting.  

Trad then becomes all about jumping on bandwagons and running with them.  That's the danger.


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