Aqua Buddha
Scribe
What is the ideal length for a fantasy novel? What do readers (or publishers) prefer?
As long as it takes to tell the story well, and not a single word longer.
There seem to be some people <cough>Jordan<cough> who believe that every fantasy novel must be of "epic" length—or else a trilogy—and this has conditioned the buying market into accepting this more or less uncritically.
When I was first picked up by my publisher, my first novel was at 103,000 words. The original draft stretched little over 50,000 and over the rewrites I managed to snake my way up, adding in detail and descriptions. While they are confident in the story, they basically said it's too long and I need to shorten it because it's going to intimidate readers because of the time it will take to read it, and impact on sales. This is especially true for a series; if the first novel is smaller, the audience is more likely to pick it up and give it a go.
Really? I've had the opposite experience, as an editor. I've had several people ask for help on bulking a manuscript up, not knocking it down, after some failed attempts at publication. For fantasy, it seems a lot of publishers are still hesitant about works that are in the 50k to 80k range. Lord knows I'd love to find a book under 100,000 words in the "New Releases" section of the fantasy bookstore downtown, but it seems like half of the ones that are are just supplementary materials (Paolini's Guide to the Inheritance series, Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard, etc.).
But, then again, it could just be a different market in Australia.
kjj- have you read the entire Dark Tower series yet? IF you haven't... don't read the last chapter LMAO it pissed me off so bad even though King WARNED the readers that it would >.< Still my all time favorite series though. I've even collected all the King books that tie into it LOL
In a way I think it's kinder in Australia. There's not as much competition - though there is a lot - and it seems publishers are more willing to help you through the final step if you have promise, but aren't quite there just yet.