YA length? (From Aug. '09)

kriswatt · Aug 5, 2009

This may be a silly and obvious question, but I have yet to be able to find the answer... Maybe I'm not looking in the right places.

Does anyone know the average length of a YA novel? Word count or page count? Is there a standard length?

Thanks so much!

kaitlin008 · Aug 5, 2009

There are some threads about this...the search function is kind of finicky though sometimes. But here's the most recent:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149254

Mercurio Cavaldi · Aug 5, 2009

In reading agent blogs and also books about this, it seems 80,000 words is the max, but I don't know if there really is a golden rule... The YA novel I just finished is 72,000 words.

Wark · Aug 5, 2009

60k is my goal. That's 172 pages. 70k is 200 pages.

When I was younger, I would look at the back to see how many pages it had. I didn't like books over 200 pages.

suki · Aug 5, 2009

Mercurio Cavaldi said:
In reading agent blogs and also books about this, it seems 80,000 words is the max, but I don't know if there really is a golden rule... The YA novel I just finished is 72,000 words.

There are a number of threads in the YA forum. It's hard to search for word count as two separate words, so try wordcount. Or, just click back through the pages - I bet you find about one a month...

The opinions are a bit all over the place - but 60,000-80,000 seems lately to be the targeted sweet spot, with room for as low as 50,000 and as high as 90,000. That excludes the rarities - as there are 90,000+ debuts (but they are usually fantasy, and more rare) and there are under 50,000-word debuts.

If you go on Amazon, you can get the wordcount of some of the books. Look for debut novels in your subgenre and see where they clock in (and i would focus on wordcount, more than pages, since pages vary more by size of book, layout, etc.).

ETA: Page number can be especially misleading because of book formatting (literally, the size of the printed pages, etc.) and whether the book is dialog or exposition heavy. A lot of crips dialoge will take up more pages than the same number of words in dense paragraphs. So, wordcount is the more standard measure IMO.

~suki

Shady Lane · Aug 5, 2009

Wark said:
60k is my goal. That's 172 pages. 70k is 200 pages.

When I was younger, I would look at the back to see how many pages it had. I didn't like books over 200 pages.

FWIW, my debut is 45K and 242 pages.

Sage · Aug 5, 2009

suki said:
There are a number of threads in the YA forum. It's hard to search for word count as two separate words, so try wordcount. Or, just click back through the pages - I bet you find about one a month...

There are actually four or five in the past month alone, but they've been pushed back a few pages.

suki · Aug 5, 2009

Sage said:
There are actually four or five in the past month alone, but they've been pushed back a few pages.

That doesn't surprise me...and so scrolling back manually might find them faster than using the search function...

~suki

History_Chick · Aug 5, 2009

Shady Lane said:
FWIW, my debut is 45K and 242 pages.

Oh..hmmm. How does that work. Now I am all screwed up. Is it font size?

Wark said:
60k is my goal. That's 172 pages. 70k is 200 pages.

When I was younger, I would look at the back to see how many pages it had. I didn't like books over 200 pages.

And thats still true!!!! I have students who ALWAYS flip to the back of the book. Under 200 is golden. Above and they start to turn white and get the shakes.

suki · Aug 5, 2009

History_Chick said:
Oh..hmmm. How does that work. Now I am all screwed up. Is it font size?

It can be many, many things - literally the size of the page (ie, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is much smaller in every way but thickness than many of the books on my book shelf), how much dialog, font size, white space, illustrations, etc.

Look at your books and compare their design. Flip through the pages and notice the white space and longer paragraphs vs. dialog.

~suki

Danthia · Aug 5, 2009

You're safe in the 50K to 80K range, and 20% under or over those ranges is fine. Word counts are more a guide to what's commonly printer than hard and fast rules. I always aim for a 60K first draft, finals run around the 70K mark for example.

lm728 · Aug 5, 2009

I've read a few books, when I've checked their word counts (Renaissance Learning is a good website), they turn out to be around 14K. LOCK AND KEY is 92K. And many, many YA books are less than 50K.

I think it has to do with formatting. Dialogue takes up a lot of space.

suki · Aug 5, 2009

tilt190 said:
I've read a few books, when I've checked their word counts (Renaissance Learning is a good website), they turn out to be around 14K. LOCK AND KEY is 92K. And many, many YA books are less than 50K.

I think it has to do with formatting. Dialogue takes up a lot of space.

There are exceptions at both ends of the spectrum, but it's important to focus on the debut novels when assessing wordcount for unpublished writers. Once an author has been successful, publishers are more willing to take risks. It's also important to make sure the book is actually considered YA, and not MG.

I can't think of a contemporary YA book (last 5 years) with a wordcount under 20,000, I actually can't think of one under 35,000 words. I'd welcome some examples if anyone knows of some - last 5 years or so, word counts under 30,000, 20,000 - to add to my understanding of what the market is doing.

While you have to write the book that need swriting, when you get to the shopping it end of things, it's always good to know what the market is doing.

And while the difference bewteen MG and YA may be a small distinction for the readers out there, when querying, it is an important distinction.

~suki

wandergirl · Aug 5, 2009

suki said:
I can't think of a contemporary YA book (last 5 years) with a wordcount under 20,000, I actually can't think of one under 35,000 words. I'd welcome some examples if anyone knows of some - last 5 years or so, word counts under 30,000, 20,000 - to add to my understanding of what the market is doing.

~suki

Exceptions to the rule that do not by any means change it -- all are somewhat or extremely established authors. All three are also edgy, probably 14-up:

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott is 27k.
(It wouldn't work as well any other way, though. Composed of small, slow-moving (and highly disturbing) vignettes.)

Checkers by John Marsden is 30k.

The Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier is 25k.

suki · Aug 5, 2009

wandergirl said:
Exceptions to the rule that do not by any means change it -- all are somewhat or extremely established authors. All three are also edgy, probably 14-up:

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott is 27k.
(It wouldn't work as well any other way, though. Composed of small, slow-moving (and highly disturbing) vignettes.)

Checkers by John Marsden is 30k.

The Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier is 25k.

Thanks for those - I knew Living Dead Girl would be close, but couldn't find a word count (so I guessed over 30,000 though) (And I agree, it was the perfect length).

And the Cormier could really have been any length and sold, and I would guess close to the same for Checkers.

Can anyone think of any under 20,000 though? Or, really, any debuts in the 20,000-30,000 range? Debuts under 20,000?

Just curious...

~suki

Momento Mori · Aug 5, 2009

My agent's told me not to worry about word count for my YA fantasy. At the moment it's about 75000 and the first draft will come in around 110000. That certainly didn't phase any of the UK agents who were interested in my project.

Personally, I don't think you need to worry about word counts up to about 115,000/120,000 PROVIDED that you've got a good story that justifies that number. It all comes down to taking a good hard look at your prose and seeing what's redundant and what's needed for the story.

MM

eyeblink · Aug 6, 2009

suki said:
Thanks for those - I knew Living Dead Girl would be close, but couldn't find a word count (so I guessed over 30,000 though) (And I agree, it was the perfect length).

And the Cormier could really have been any length and sold, and I would guess close to the same for Checkers.

Can anyone think of any under 20,000 though? Or, really, any debuts in the 20,000-30,000 range? Debuts under 20,000?

Just curious...

~suki

I don't have an official wordcount for it, but Kidulthood by Noel Clarke and Jim Eldridge (the novelisation of the film) is VERY short - not much over 20k at an educated guess. It's 116 pages of largish print. It's another "edgy" title, with an "explicit content" warning on the cover.

There are also the books that Barrington Stoke publish for reluctant readers, though with YA content - they're around 10k, so are really short stories in book form.

And seconded the typesetting issue. I have the US paperback of Scott Westerfeld's The Secret Hour (first part of the Midnighters trilogy) - it's 65k spread out over just under 400 pages.

STKlingaman · Aug 6, 2009

I never write a story with a defined
word count in mind (how can you?).
A story develops as I write it,
sub-plots, twists, new interesting
people enter, characters develop their
own unique personalities which
influence the MC and plot.
Write the story as it comes to you.
Sell the idea to an agent/publisher
and let them best decide what to do
with it. (They know the market)
They may cut some chapters, ask you
to add chapters to enrich characters
or plot points, and make it two books,
or cut it up into novellas of 15-20,000
words.

vroth · Aug 7, 2009

I have to say that the 80,000 word count ceiling, while flexible, was extreeeemely helpful to me. Originally my novel was 110,000 words long and when I was told that I should pick up the axe and start hacking away, I...

1. Had a panic attack
2. Considered banging my head against the desk
and 3. Made some major edits that ended up seriously improving my work.

If you can find a way to trim the fat, do it. You don't want the reason you got rejected to rely solely on the things you couldn't bear to part with...but might have been worth deleting anyway.

You gotta kill your babies, as they say. But that's just my opinion.

lm728 · Aug 7, 2009

suki said:
There are exceptions at both ends of the spectrum, but it's important to focus on the debut novels when assessing wordcount for unpublished writers. Once an author has been successful, publishers are more willing to take risks. It's also important to make sure the book is actually considered YA, and not MG.

I can't think of a contemporary YA book (last 5 years) with a wordcount under 20,000, I actually can't think of one under 35,000 words. I'd welcome some examples if anyone knows of some - last 5 years or so, word counts under 30,000, 20,000 - to add to my understanding of what the market is doing.

While you have to write the book that need swriting, when you get to the shopping it end of things, it's always good to know what the market is doing.

And while the difference bewteen MG and YA may be a small distinction for the readers out there, when querying, it is an important distinction.

~suki

LIKE A THORN BY Clara Vidal was 14K (great book, btw!). It deals with mature content, though (abuse, mental disorders), so it can't be MG, and is tiny--100-something pages (a novella?). Originally in French, though, and you know how the French make everything longer by tacking a silent letter at the end of each word.

I think it was her first novel. I remember being so entranced by the prose, that I tried to look up her other works. But LIKE A THORN was the only one I found.

vroth · Aug 7, 2009

Not sure if you were replying to me, but my "baby" has been through 3 rounds of ruthless revisions with my agent. She feels the pacing is perfect now, in her words, "really, really tight." It's her idea to sell it to the YA market, and I trust her expertise. It does make me nervous knowing it's not the expected length for that genre, but it's definitely not flabby. Just a chunky, jam-packed story.

You're right about revisions. My story is so much better after going through them. I worry that there isn't anything left to cut, and editors are inclined to want to do that. Oh, well. Time will tell.

My comment was more general-- I don't mean to call anyone's draft fat.

Skodobah · Aug 8, 2009

My first draft was about 98K! Then I cut it down to just under 88K. Probably still too long, but because of the subject matter I felt the word count was necessary. My new work, however, will be much shorter and I'm relieved!

I prefer shorter YA books. Some of the super-duper ones of late (i.e., Twilight series) hurt my wrists!

- Julie

The Rook · Aug 8, 2009

I'm at about 30K in words right now, but it would seem as if I'm only a third of the way through. I suppose that fits in the acceptable debut range.

Vimes · Aug 18, 2009

Well I finished my MS at 120k (why, why, why?!!) but managed to cut it down to 100k. I sent off my first 3 chaps to a UK agent and they've said they like it, but can I cut another 20-30k off it and send the full to them... Eek... Thankfully I'd already decided on some plot changes that would bring the word count down, but only to 85k, so I am just going to see what they say. Interesting, though, because they've asked me to do that before they've even seen the whole thing, on the grounds that my 100k word count would struggle to get published in a commercial market. I was told that 70k would be ideal. I'm wondering if publishers are less open (than usual) to longer texts because of the recession and the higher costs of producing bigger books?

P.S. You cannot imagine the mental trauma I've endured, knowing by the time I finish, I will have cut out enough to make a whole new book. I could've written TWO books by now! 120 k... what was I thinking?!

Gigi · Aug 20, 2009

A good post from Kristin Nelson on this subject today on the Pub Rants blog:

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2009/08/wrong-questionright-question_20.html

YA length? (From Aug. '09)

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