Plus Size On The High Street

A novel a week.

I hope that's okay - it has to write after all, what to do:)

A friend at my university, in fact, a computer scientist, two times in less than a week 60,000 words produced in novels - with the help of a few undergraduates. There's the story here on the university website to read, but in English. In any case, interesting ... or threatening?

Destination Weddings Thank You

How many pages for a Book?

Yesterday I, several Detours on the homepage of cassandra clare come (some perhaps known as the author of the Draco trilogy), which is in accordance with their fandom internal successes but also an accomplished writer for *- YA books.
On her site she has a great page of tips and tricks for writing . Particularly interesting I found the article by Colleen Lindsay on the length of books .
If some of you do not want to struggle through the article, I translate here the most important times. :)

First, a book should always be measured in words, not in pages. I can fill it with just over 2000 words over 200 A4 pages, as I put the gap to two lines and the font from Arial to 70.
But now to the point: Something

that I see often in queries are Word Counts also go beyond 100k. Often a manuscript exceeds this significant to a lot: I've seen Word Counts of 140k, 160k and an author has actually told me that he has written a YA manuscript, which was 188k long.

I usually go beyond this door stop politely, but lately I've been trying to take my time to the potential authors to demonstrate that their Books are just too long and propose a feasible length in front of them, depending on the genre that they write.

Somewhere out there has become a myth - especially among fantasy writers - that a higher word count is better. Authors see heavy and fat fantasy stories on the shelf and think you just have to write such a thick book to be released. Sometimes an author writes a long book simply because it is not a very good writer yet. Good writers learn how to shorten a manuscript to the most important and most indispensable elements, the Word Count fat cut away, the so-features many authors beginning to end. And the fact is, most of these "serious and fat fantasy "books that you see on the shelves, have really only one word count of about 100k to 120k.



[...] There was a time, ten years or so, more than the standard Word Counts .. were not the cases like everything goes through the books industry trends, but now wind their assistants to adult novels - even editors of monumental fantasy - a bit when they manuscripts are submitted that are longer than 110k

[.. ..]

And keep in mind that there are always Exception to the rule, but a good rule of thumb would be this:

• YA Fiction = Can be anything from about 50k to 80k , sometimes - but rarely - more than 90k


• ** Urban Fantasy / Paranormal Romance = Normally between the 80k to 100k mark, and some urban fantasy writers (I think Kelley Armstrong could be one of them) range even higher Word Counts one


• mystery and crime novels = *** While Cozys tend to be shorter than the average (between 60k and 70k), most books fall into this category between 80k and 100k about


• Mainstream Fiction = Depends on the type of literature, it can cause vary: Chick lit is somewhere between 80k and 100k ; Literary Fiction **** can have up to 120k , but recently there is a trend towards more efficient, shorter and more elegant Literary books, find Thriller also somewhere around 90k to 100k ; Historical novels can be more up to 140k or (and again: this is only a rough guide - there is always Exception to the rule). And everything is under 50k usually regarded as a novel, what something is to see the agents and editors do not, unless the publisher has a short story collection commissioned. (Agent Kristin Nelson has a good post about authors who ask for manuscripts that are too short)


• Science Fiction and Fantasy = Here is that with which most authors seem to have problems. Most of the editors of major SF / F publishers with whom I have recently spoken, do books, the higher into the end of the adult literature fall (so), some of them have told me that 100k the ideal manuscript length for good space opera or fantasy is, really for a späktakuläres monumental fantasy book, they think, that 120k/130k rich. Despite the length, they expect they can get the author to it before Publication to cut even further. (By the way, readers will often make Exception to the rule for sequels. Take the knowledge that the number of pages in JK Rowling's "Harry Potter" series and George RR Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series is always higher.) But even authors since years will be published and should know better, are usually submitted manuscripts that exceed the requested length of the publisher to 30k to 50k, which inevitably means more work for the authors, because retreat publisher is not - if a contract requires a book that long-100k and you submit one that is 130k long, you have to expect again to sit down and find a way 30k separate from the baby away before the manuscript is accepted. [...] If an agent or an editor finds a truly outstanding book that extends into 200k (yes, that happens!), Can it be that it is divided into two books make the life easier for everyone.

Finally, they are also advised that it is the Word Count on the safe side, if you submit a manuscript as an aspiring writer and an editor or agent wants to move to his side.


These figures come from 2008 and from America, but I think they will have to be guidelines (for Germany) does not change great.
I hope I could at least help one / one of you. :)

* YA = Young Adult
** Urban Fantasy = special form of the Contemporary = Fantasy, where the "real" action within the city takes place
*** Cozys downplayed cozies, a subgenre in of detective novels, where sex and violence or be treated humorously
**** Literary Fiction = focus (as opposed to commercial mainstream literature) to more psychological depth, character and style