On Word Counts (For Fiction)
Guys, I’m only saying this because I care about you, but please if you’re planning on pursuing traditional publishing (as i am), please, please PLEASE do not ignore word counts!
I’ll go over some of the reasons why, but first I wanted to address the biggest rebuttal towards this I see, which is always “but what about x famous author”? And the response is: They have an established platform and fans that will buy anything with their name, they can do whatever. You aren’t a sure investment.
Also don’t count on the idea that you’ll just your book in half and publish it as two books.
First of all, a lot of publishers won’t sign you for more than one book or even propose an “option” in your contract (that’s basically when you can pitch a book to the publisher that you haven’t written and/or finished and they can decide whether they are interested in publishing it - this is only if you already have a signed book with them).
Second of all, most books are plotted so they hit specific points: inciting incident, midpoint, climax, résolution. If you cut the book in half, you lose half the book and your readers will not be satisfied.
Anyway, why do word counts matter:
Well, there’s several reasons and i’m not an industry pro, so I don’t know all of them, but the basics are that:
1. Publishers don’t want to invest in debut authors, who don’t have an established name or platform (the only exception is non fiction / memoirs, as those people are expected to already have a platform, but this post is about fiction). If your book is longer, that’s extra publishing cost, editing cost, distribution cost etc.
2. Having a book that’s too long or two short usually signals that there’s a pacing issue. If your book is too long, perhaps you have a lot of unnecessary exposition and navel gazing and fuff. Or on the flip side, if your book is too short, maybe you skimped on the world building or character development or your scenes need more detail.
Agents will AND DO auto reject books based of word counts. That’s one of the biggest red flags they look for. While I don’t think that 5-10k or so over will absolutely murder you in the querying process, you can’t query a YA novel at 200k or a an adult romance at 30k. (Well, you can, but you will get rejected without even having query letter read.)
Yes, outliers exist but they are few and far between and you shouldn’t count on being that outlier. Please look at the word counts for your genre, and follow the rules. This is what will give you the best chance at being read/picked up by an agent.
You’re Not the Exception Video
WordCounts Video (I seriously could not recommend this channel/playlist highly enough, regardless of which publishing path you want to take)
Agent talking about word counts
Agent rejecting books based off WordCounts
