Length help please?

As useless as this may sound (and may ultimately be) a book should be as long as it needs to be to effectively tell the story / get the message across. It varies from genre to genre and from writer to writer.

I'd say (just my two pennies) that you aim for 80,000, and see what happens. If it's longer, so be it - if it's shorter, that's okay too. I'd try to keep it above 60,000 personally, and below 100,000. Just seems to be what works for me.

Best of luck!

Whatever lenght it will take to cover what you have in mind without makig it too big.

Are you looking to write a book about it or just a paper?

If you find that your material ends up shorter than you'd like, you could consider adding personal accounts/interviews with other parents (assuming you haven't already done this) that compliment what you've written...

I agree, you can fill as much as you need to without it being fluff by finding and adding personal anecdotes, etc. from others. For example, interesting message board posts on the topic, mixed up so as not to identify anyone's personal post. I am not sure but don't believe authenticity is important. The readers want things that are representative, which is a bit different.

Also, nonfiction does seem to run differently in length than fiction. For example, with nonfiction books like mine a large percentage of the ones in print seem to run right around 200 pages, which would be short for fiction.

So, you might want to look up similar books and see if there is a typical word count. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can get a fair estimate by picking 10 pages at random and counting the number of words on each, then dividing by 10 (page count can differ depending on font size, etc. Word count is more accurate). Good luck!

As was mentioned above your length is going to have a lot to do with what you want to do with this. 25,000 words may be a bit too short for some publishers in a traditional configuration. I do think there is a ebook market developing for niche parenting pieces like what you seem to be describing.

Write to the length that feels right, then take a look at your options, this is not my niche, but I write in a similar one, I'm thinking there are going to be a lot of options out there.

I was looking at a contract for a friend's nonfiction book recently and the publisher wanted 50-60k words.

Lia_joy said:

If you find that your material ends up shorter than you'd like, you could consider adding personal accounts/interviews with other parents (assuming you haven't already done this) that compliment what you've written...

Click to expand...

Fruitbat said:

I agree, you can fill as much as you need to without it being fluff by finding and adding personal anecdotes, etc. from others. ..

Click to expand...

the addster said:

As was mentioned above your length is going to have a lot to do with what you want to do with this. 25,000 words may be a bit too short for some publishers in a traditional configuration. I do think there is a ebook market developing for niche parenting pieces like what you seem to be describing...

Click to expand...

I want to agree with the above comments. It seems that most published books (not counting poetry and children's books) run 50k words or more. However, some ebooks are much shorter.

Also, if there is a self-help component to your book, you could add in sections for journaling. For example, you could have some mostly blank pages where parents can write down positive interactions with their child, or make a note of developmental milestones their child reached, that sort of thing.

Are there any cartoons online about raising autistic children? Is there are, you could ask for permission to include some. This might have the light, supportive feel you are going for, too.