John M
Dreamer
Hi guys,
So I recently finished writing my novel and sent it off to a freelance editor for an editorial assessment. She returned the manuscript with a 15 page report filled with lots of praise and also a good amount of helpful constructive criticism. All in all I was very happy with the job she had done. One thing I was not that happy about was a fact she pointed out to me. If your goal is to be traditionally published your manuscript can not be longer than 120K words (less if its not SFF).
This was something that caught me off guard. I hadn't done my homework it seems. Apparently there is a rule in the industry that novels above 120K words, especially for debut authors, are no-gos. It has to do with cost of printing long books vs the risk of not selling well. Longer books are just financially a lot more risky. If you are an established author like George R R Martin and have proven you can sell books, its a totally different matter. Then your books can be as long as you wish. But for debuts, you really need to stick to less than 120K to be taken seriously.
My novel is at 160K and I now have big job to do cutting it down to 120K or less. I just wanted to bring this aspect of traditional publishing to your attention in case you are like me and have not thought about word count much at all. Longer is not always better.
So I recently finished writing my novel and sent it off to a freelance editor for an editorial assessment. She returned the manuscript with a 15 page report filled with lots of praise and also a good amount of helpful constructive criticism. All in all I was very happy with the job she had done. One thing I was not that happy about was a fact she pointed out to me. If your goal is to be traditionally published your manuscript can not be longer than 120K words (less if its not SFF).
This was something that caught me off guard. I hadn't done my homework it seems. Apparently there is a rule in the industry that novels above 120K words, especially for debut authors, are no-gos. It has to do with cost of printing long books vs the risk of not selling well. Longer books are just financially a lot more risky. If you are an established author like George R R Martin and have proven you can sell books, its a totally different matter. Then your books can be as long as you wish. But for debuts, you really need to stick to less than 120K to be taken seriously.
My novel is at 160K and I now have big job to do cutting it down to 120K or less. I just wanted to bring this aspect of traditional publishing to your attention in case you are like me and have not thought about word count much at all. Longer is not always better.