People in a bad economy want value for their money - which means a big, thick book for their cash. My thought? Unless you’re writing for a category publisher, shoot for the 90,000 word mark. Occasionally somebody puts out a huge novel on a chunk of dead trees, but it’s rare. I frequently get authors sending me 150,000 word novels (they always seem to be scifi & fantasy writers, who must all be longwinded), and once received a 180,000-word tome. And now we’re seeing some publishers produce book that run from 100,000 to 120,000 words. Most stand-alone novels run between 80,000 and 95,000 words. Historical romances at Harlequin will run to 75,000 words, but everywhere else they’re longer. The shortest that routinely gets contracted is the category romance, which runs about 55,000 words. Frankly, nobody is buying 30,000-word novels. That said, let me speak to a couple other things you mentioned…įirst, while it could generally be said that most books run between 240 and 300 pages, most NOVELS tend to run toward the longer side. (That’s not exactly true, but it’s a good general guideline.) So a 100,000-word novel will run about 300 pages. Sure there is, Sheila… the rule of thumb with most publishers is to average about 300 words per page. He asked me how many pages it is… But is there an appropriate way to estimate a book’s size?” I told him it’s roughly 150,000 words, but that I’ll be cutting it to perhaps 120,000 by the time I’m done. Today’s question is from Sheila, who says, “An agent just requested my novel proposal, and asked about the word count.
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