[KatG]

I feel I should reiterate here again that publishers accomodate a wide range of lengths of works, both on the short side and the long. While some imprints may have length requirements of some kind, most don't, or can make accomodations with other imprints in their houses. Small presses are sometimes limited by production cost constraints and cannot produce very long books, or at least not in one volume. But the size varies a great deal, and there are things they can do in printing to adjust the size -- and thus price -- of a book.

SF tends to run shorter than fantasy, though longer sf novels are more frequent now. Epic fantasy -- pre-industrial or secondary world -- tends to be the longest because it has the most background info and usually the biggest casts, but also contains books around the 100,000 word area. Contemporary fantasies can be quite long, but a majority of them are about the same length as a sf novel. Horror novels tend to be on the fat side, but a shorter length is still workable. In general fiction, there are virtually no limits on length either way.

So again, you can figure out what sort of story you're writing and how long you need that story to be before worrying about publishers.

[Power to the J]

I am writing a book. Seriously. The biggest problem with this little book of mine is that it is nowhere near little. It's about 80,000 words right now, and may have concluded the first quarter of the overall tale. Yes, I have already taken into consideration the notion that books are as long as they need to be. The main reason I'm writing this is to inquire about the lengths of some famous novels, not in pages, but word count. For example, how long is Steven King's "Gunslinger"? or Papa Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" in words?

What are some averages or rough figures of some greats?

Bringing up an old post but here are some numbers for anyone interested:

Gnslinger:55,398
LOTR:467,662

Just so you know, it is pretty easy to get these. Go to borders (http://www.borders.com) and then find a book that says: "look inside." Click on it, then when you're on the book's page, scroll over but don't click on the look inside. It'll give you some options, and one of them is text stats. You'll get all you need to know there. (NOTE. Some of the books don't work, even with the look inside.)

[KatG]

Well there you go. "The Gunslinger," a dark fantasy, started life as a novella published in the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which was then elongated slightly. So it's a short novel, like a lot of the sf novels that were done the same way. Tolkein started out writing a sequel for his children's novel, "The Hobbit" and it turned into an epic for adults. It was published initially as one volume and didn't do so well, but someone got the bright idea to break it into three volumes which worked much better for paperback. But it was initially published as a large thing. There's a lot of variance.

[Power to the J]

Just saying: there are long books and short books, good books and bad books. Don't worry about numbers and just tell the story.


Quality, not quantity.

[Moraven]

Quality, not quantity is good advice, but not always true. Publishers do not want books from unpublished authors that are 300,000 words long. Thats a huge project for someone who may fail miserably and never be read. As far as my personal research has shown, 100,000 words seems to be a good target. Many books are longer--but many books you see in B&N are not authors first efforts. Agents and publishers will be happy to see shorter work. One publishing company i read about even accepted manuscripts down to 65000 words. That feels horribly short to me, but they were fine with it. Baen takes things from 100-130. My novel from last summer is 140k and the person i had read it over suggested that i shorten it. The one i'm working on now will by 100-110 (they have this tendency to get longer than i want, so i'm shooting for 100).

Anyway, the point is, at 80,000 words you want to start working to a conclusion. Wait until you publish something before you go for broke and write 300k.

[Power to the J]

^^

But, if a book is of exceptional QUALITY, then it could be 800,000 words and still get published, because if it's good enough people will go and buy it. LotR, WoT and SoT are three of the most succesfull fantasy series of all time, and everyone's looking for the next big thing.

In other words, if your book is good enough, it'll get published--end of story.

[Holbrook]

^^

In other words, if your book is good enough, it'll get published--end of story.

Not quite :D You have to find an editor/agent who thinks its good enough. And that is a lot harder work/heart breaking, than writing the book in the first place. :(

[Takoren]

I would like to thank this thread for helping me to be not quite so concerned about my manuscript's length. I am approximately halfway through my (planned) story, which has kept growing as I write it, so it may be longer than I think.

I'm at 155,642 words so far. I thought I was writing a short book. I guess I'm not.

BTW, is there any site I can go to that tells me the word count for given books?

PS: Optimutt, good luck with your book.

[Power to the J]

^^For word counts look at my post about 4 or 5 up.

[Power to the J]

Not quite :D You have to find an editor/agent who thinks its good enough. And that is a lot harder work/heart breaking, than writing the book in the first place. :(

Lol tell me about it. But if your query and book are both high quality, then your in good shape!