Some publishers will accept books in the 80,000 to 125,000 range. If you’re writing category you’ll need to follow the very specific word count requirements of that line.įantasy or SF: Here you can go a little bit longer. Romance: 80,000 to 100,000, and no, I’m not counting category. In the case of mysteries 70,000 to 90,000 words will likely work for you. Mystery: I think that for mysteries you often have the freedom of writing a book that’s a little shorter. Can you give us a range or can you be genre specific? I suppose I can, to the best of my abilities. Sure, with some of these genres you’re going to be on the long end and with others the short end, but again this is the “when in doubt word count.” 80,000 words is pretty much safe everywhere. In fact, I think 80,000 words even works for YA. Okay, sure, it’s never going to work for children’s books or poetry, but since I don’t rep those it doesn’t matter (to me anyway). I don’t think that you can ever go wrong with 80,000 words whether you’re writing mystery, romance, fantasy, literary fiction, or nonfiction. Of course I know that’s never going to happen.įirst and foremost, what length should your book be? My answer is when in doubt think 80,000 words, give or take. It’s an endless discussion here, on the blogs of other agents and on writing loops and boards, so while I’ve posted on this before I’m going to try to make this the complete guide to word count post, everything you need to know. I swear I must get a question a week relating to word count.
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