Concerns about length, particularly fantasy

Most sci-fi/fantasy publishing houses specifically state that they rarely look at things under 100k...don't ask me why, I guess they think everyone should overwrite as much as Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind.

If your story is solid, I would say don't worry about it. Finish it up and see where you're at, but keep in mind that you'll be a minority in the fantasy market.

Azraelsbane,

Don't know where you heard that. Most editors I've talked to state 80-120K is the standard range (works out to about 400 pages), and 80-100K would be preferable (smaller word count, easier to keep the page count down without having to resort to tiny type - smaller page count, slightly lower price, easier to sell the product).

However, you may have other sources than I do. YMMV

I'll look up the publishing house websites and post them here. A few had a word count range that was genre specific. Such as romance preferred 80k and under, fantasy 90k+, etc. I'll try to find it. If that's not the case, great! I thought it was a little weird when I was looking up places to go with my first novel (which is technically slipstream and only 80k words). There were a lot of publishing houses that warned right off the bat that they prefer it to be longer.

I think fantasy tends to be long because there's a lot more explaination. In other works a lot can be assumed because it's a real place. In fantasy, who a new world is built, you have to talk about what's going on in the story and in general, so people can picture it.

I don't think 80k sounds crazy short, but I guess it kind of is for fantasy. Do you know why, exactly, your second and third are shorter? Usually the trilogy gets bigger because the story gets bigger and the stakes are higher. I wrote a trilogy where the second book was significantly smaller than the third, which had a lot of filler. I've realized that it'd work better as a stand alone with a sequel, now. Maybe yours might be the same?

In any case, I agree with Azraelsbane in thinking you should just go ahead and finish and see where you are. Maybe when you're finished you might find that there are a few subplots you can flesh out to take each to 90k or something.

Fantasy has a higher word count then other genres for good reasons. First, description is a must in fantasy. After all, you're trying to take the reader to a different world, and you can't do that without drawing them a clear picture of it. Second, fantasy lends itself to more complex plots (and lots of subplots), which is the same reason why series and trilogies are far more common in fantasy than anything else. Fantasy frequently has almost unlimited possibilities for interesting events, and it would be a shame not to explore as many of them as possible.

An 80,000 word book is going to be a very hard sell in fantasy. I know DAW doesn't accept anything under 85,000 words. I don't remember Tor having a minimum word count, just a 150k max (DAW has no max word count in their submission guidelines). What's going to be a bigger problem than publisher guidelines is the fact that a 275 page book is going to look mighty skinny on the fantasy shelf. Particularly from a new author, readers probably won't see the value, and thus won't buy the book. (I think this is silly and personally believe a lot of the 800 page fantasy doorstoppers could have stood to lose about 300 pages, but that's me, and not your normal fantasy reader)

Would it be possible for you to make it a pair of books, each around 120,000 words? That might go over a lot better, and wouldn't require you to really change anything. (I know, you probably end the books at the points you do for a reason, but it's something to at least consider) Of course, you could always add more subplots or something to make the books longer too.

My (limited) understanding of publishing and sales for new authors is that you should do everything you can to be near the average word count for your genre. Being under or over the norm makes it that much harder to get published.

Ok, I can't find the publisher of the 100+ one, but the 85k one was DAW, as Horizon mentioned.

I guess you can ignore my above comment Ni, sorry about that, but I'm still worried about my 80k novel making it, because when I split it up with the "book-page-o-meter" it only comes out to be like 270 pages, which is super short for the genre IMO.

I would have gotten here faster, but some strange compulsion made me pop down into the SFF forum and count today's posts (21 as of right now, by the way).

Anywho....

TheKnightWhoSaidNi said:

We know that the tradition is that the first is long, the second is longer, and the third is a doorstopper, but that's not the case with me. So, what are your thoughts?

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Trilogies by unknown writers are notoriously difficult to sell, so you may want to put your focus on the first novel. Make sure it stands alone. Whip it into the best shape possible. Make it shine.

My personal thoughts on the "long, longer, doorstopper" thing is that traditions are being broken all of the time. If your story is finished after 80k words, it's finished. Don't add superfluous language in order to pad the word count and create something you think is expected out of the genre.

Also, why are so many fantasy novels of such unholy length anyways?

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Tradition? (sorry, I just had a Fiddler on the Roof moment)

Many new writers try to emulate their favorite authors. Since many of those authors follow in the doorstopper tradition, it's a vicious cycle. Some folks love to read the doorstoppers. Others don't. It all comes down to personal reading preference.

If you don't like to read doorstoppers, don't write them. Write your story the way it should be written.

Azraelsbane said:

Ok, I can't find the publisher of the 100+ one, but the 85k one was DAW, as Horizon mentioned.

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I'm pretty sure I've seen the 100+ before, too, though I can't remember what publisher it was. I bet we saw the same one...maybe they've changed their guidelines, though.

I try to aim for 350 to 400 pages in my fantasy manuscripts. I've also come across a few publisher websites that stated fantasy submissions should be no less than 100k words.

I'm sure there are a lot of shorter works in fantasy. The Princes in Amber series comes to mind... I think I would prefer, however, to overshoot the mark and trim down to a size most publishers are looking for.

In the end, though, if you think the story is told and it's the best you can make, don't change the length unless an agent/publisher asks you to.

I found the publisher who was probably being cited with the 100k+ guidelines, it's Baen Publishing. I've never heard of them, but I might just be out of touch.

Also, since Tor doesn't post word count minimums, some people have speculated that they want manuscripts of 100k+, though I think 90k+ would probably be closer.

YES! It was Baen. I must have books published by them and that's where I got the name to look it up the first time.

Well, a search on Amazon for books published by Baen brought up over 1,400 titles in sci-fi and fantasy, so I'd say they're probably a fairly major publisher and I'm just out of touch, LOL.

Yep Baen wants 100K and they're one of the major houses. They also get a good rating on P&E.

Baen was it! Thanks for finding this, guys. I was feeling like a bit of a misinformation loser there for a sec.

For the love of all that is holy don't fatten it with flowery language Death, destruction, sexy shapeshifting demons... That's all good.

I'm sure you'll do fine. Good luck!

The first Harry Potter book was also marketed as YA, which normally runs shorter than genre fantasy. Best advice I've seen is write a book that stands alone and can have a sequel. Then write another such book. Write sequels to the one that sells.

I always hear about how fantasy needs to be long and convoluted.

From a consumer's perspective, I don't necessarily agree. A terse, tight, tense story can often be one of the best to read. Does not really lend itself too a long sprawling series that can make a lot of money for publishers.

Looking at one of my bookshelves for standalones (kinda), the late David Gemmell wrote books of 365, 310, 310, 306, 306, and 290 pages in pb - rough count puts them at 60-70K words. And his first published novel was the longest of this sample.

They are exciting and undeniably fantasy without fluffy trappings that make for thousand page epics.

Nothing is required, so long as it is long enough that an editor will market it.

Ursula K. Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea" is right around 60K. (I did an estimate through avg. number of words on a page times pages)

I really don't get the whole length issue either. I'd much rather pick up a concise, well-written short book than a honking encyclopedia-size book any day. And I'm a fantasy/scifi fan! I think there's nothing worse than picking up a lengthy book and walking away feeling beat over the head by their umpteen-times-stated-in-lengthy-droning-prose dead horse. (it's like, "Alright. I got it. A long time ago. Cut to the plot, please?") Like with Le Guin's books, for example. She gives a perfect sense of place, and doesn't have to yammer on and on for pages about it.

I say, give me brevity!!

I'm with Firefingers on this. I would welcome a trilogy of shortish fantasy novels. I tend to think each story has its ideal length. Ni, if yours works best at that length, then go for it.

Has it really become a tradition to write each book longer than the last? I thought it was just a result of authors getting too caught up in their made-up world, or running too many plotlines simultaneously and realizing too late that they need a huge third volume to conclude them all. My guess is one author did that, then a whole bunch followed suit because, hey, look, he got away with it, why not me? My feeling on this is that "everybody else is doing it" is never a valid basis for a literary decision. Somebody has to be the one to write a concise trilogy and reverse the trend.

This is just from memory (I don't have the book with me), but wasn't Glen Cook's The Black Company a fairly short novel? It threw some neat ideas around, had an original tone, and didn't overstay its welcome. (I don't know if the same can be said of the following books in the series.)

The only problem I have with short books is that sometimes the price/length ratio feels too high. That depends on the publisher, though.

My series doesn't get progressively longer either. It goes 120k, 110k, 150k, 100k (the third and fourth are estimates, but I'm pretty good at estimating and I know the second book will be shorter than the first). Where does it say series have to get progressively longer? I end the books where the plot comes to some sort of a conclusion and don't worry about the length as long as they come in between 90k and 160k. Of course, I'm not published, so it's all rather theoretical for me.