Word Count Matters

There has been quite a lot of chatter lately on word count, both from agents and editors as well as writers. If you are Stephen King, JK Rowling, etc. this entire conversation is irrelevant. However, for the rest of us mere mortals, word count is important. Paper is expensive. Printing isn't cheap. Shelf space is precious. What's this mean? Simple. Big fat books that aren't guaranteed bestsellers are not high on a publisher's wish list.

Nathan Bransford from Curtis Brown said he's not a stickler for word count, however there are general guidelines. Chuck Sambuchino from Writer's Digest posted a helpful entry on the Guide To Literary Agents blog. Are you curious to know the word count and genre of a book for the YA crowd and younger? Check Renaissance Learning's search engine.

Okay, now on to the bit about why I'm bringing all this up. Let's say you've written a novel. It's awesome. The characters are cool. The plot if phantasmagorical. It's a real page turner. It's an adult mystery novel. It's 200,000 words.

Dear Agent:

I'm seeking representation for my true crime novel, "The Blighter of Bourbon Street". Complete at 200,000 words, it is...

*screeching halt* Agent's eyes bug out, head shakes, and form letter rejection is sent, if you're lucky.


That's too long, especially if you're not an already published best selling author, and even then...

Now it goes both ways. Brilliant true crime novel, with bits of mystery thrown in? 30,000 words? No. Too short. The agent or editor won't get past that part of the query. Really. Truly.

It gets dicier in children's fiction, be it middle grade or young adult, especially when you throw in a genre like fantasy or science fiction. You write an awesomely fantastical 80,000 word fantasy novel. The protagonist is thirteen, and most of the kids around him are middle schoolers or early high school. There's no thought of sex, drugs, driving, proms, college, and whatever else those crazy teenagers get up to nowadays. :-)

It's Middle Grade. It's too long. Fantasy? Sci Fi? Still too long. Probably two times too long. But what about the first Harry Potter book? She wasn't famous then. What about the Percy Jackson books? What about Inkheart for pete's sake!!!!

They are exceptions. Well known exceptions, certainly, but they are exceptions. So ask yourself this. Will you hang your hat on finding the agent or publisher who doesn't care about word count? Or do you want to give yourself the best chance of finding representation and publication? It's your book. It's your vision and dream. Nobody can tell you what you should do but yourself.

Word count matters. We don't have to like it, but it matters.