Back to Word Count conundrum

[bruinflak]

Okay, this is my second post in like 7 hours. The background (and I apologize to those who read my last post) is that I have a sports/humor book for boys. The main characters are first graders and the word count is about 17,000. I have sent it out to some publishers and agents and have not had any luck yet.

I suspect I may not be targeting the book correctly. I've been describing it in my queries as a middle grade book (thinking the readers would be between 6 and 12 with younger kids being read to by their parents). But thanks to some good advice given in response to my first post, I started thinking that the age of my protagonists is too low because older kids don't want to read about younger kids. I'm going to make them older. I should be fine there.

But as far as page length goes, I'm really confused. I went to Barnes and Noble and wrote down the titles of the books that matched mine, or that my 8 year old daughter had read. Then I went on Amazon and got word counts (Text Stats) for each one. All of the following books are, according to Amazon, aimed at kids 9-12. The word count (and the page count for that matter) varies dramatically.

Magic Treehouse – 5,396
It Came From Center Field 10,633
Time Warp Trio – 10,420

Bailey School kids 5,000
Franny K. Stein 4,000
Rotten School 10,442
The Adventures of Commander Zack Proton, 4,875
Dear Dumb Diary, 12,000
Chet Gecko, 12,423
Adventures of the Great Brain, 40k+
Babysitter’s Club, 27,000
The Amazing Days of Abby Hayes, 16,780
The Secret of the Dripping Fang 15,652
Amber Brown 7,844

What gives? I really like the way my book reads now at 17k words, but I don't want it to be dismissed due to being the wrong length. Any ideas what is up? Thanks for indulging me.

 

[jonereb]

I wrote a kids book (for ages 8 - 12) that received no enthusiasm from agents. It was 9000 words. Recently, I edited the MS, tighened up scenes, dialogue, etc. Now it's 7500 words. I think the story is better now. We'll see if the next round of agents agree.

 

[Soccer Mom]

Some of those are Middle Grade and some are chapter books or Lower Grade. Magic Treehouse is Lower grade. Rotten School is also LG with a second (2.8) grade reading level. The Zack Proton books are LG.

Others are MG, but at the low end. For example, Center Field is listed as MG but at a fourth grade reading level (10 yo). Babysitters Clubs and Great Brain are also MG books. Ditto for Abby Hayes and the Secret of Dripping Fang.

What makes a book LG vs. MG is more than just the number of words. For example, kids like to read about characters their age or a few years older. A third grader won't read a book about a first grader. Also the complexity of the plot matters. Chapter books have simpler sentences and few sentances per paragraph.

Does that help at all or did I just increase the muddy waters?

 

[bruinflak]

Getting closer

You've introduced LG, which I'm assuming is lower grade. Maybe that's what my book is. Will agents and publishers acknowledge LG as a legit genre? Because if so, maybe I just leave my book alone. Which is frustrating. I just got two requests for partials from agents. Maybe if I can carve out the time, I'll do a lower grade/chapter book version taking out one of the three story arcs.

 

[Soccer Mom]

Yes, LG is a legitimate category. Here is an excellent resource. You can find a book and see who is publisher, word count, reading level, AR points, etc....


http://www.renlearn.com/store/quiz_home.asp

ETA: Tilda is dead on when it comes to Amazon. They tend to lable all juvenile fiction as MG. Most publishers of juvenile recognize many more categories, from easy reader to transitional chapter books on upwards. 20-50 is generally the accepted range for MG, but I've seen them as low as 15K.

 

[Jamesaritchie]

Books

There are several types of books for kids 6-12, and each type has its own word length requirements. Chapter books sometimes have a limit of 5,000 words, while novels can go as high as 60,000 words.

Age alone is not a good indicator of what your word count should be. It's the type of book you're writing that matters, and where your book falls in a given publisher's line. For the publishers I write for, MG novels need to be from 90-175 pages, a range of roughly 23,000--45,000 words. The most common length being somewhere around, oh, 130 pages, or around 32,000 words.

Chapter books for the same grades, however, have to be much shorter. A maximum of 5,000 at one publisher, and a maximum of 12,000 at a couple of others.

I don't think you have an impossible length. It is well short of what a middle grade novel usually is with most publishers, and well longer than what a chapter book would be, but it's also at that length where exceptions are sometimes made. Quality always beats out strict guidelines.

But this is one reason I believe writers really need to know length before they write the first word. It saves a lot of trouble and many rejections down the road.

 

[JumpingJack]

I've been basing my word counts on the 'Usborne Books' guidelines

Age group: 6 - 8 = 5,000 - 6,000 words approx.
Age group: 7 - 9 = 7,000 - 10,000 words approx.​

Age group: 8 - 12 = 25,000 - 50,000 words approx.

I know it's only one publisher, but to me they were pretty clear guidelines and i presumed they were going to be at least similar to other publishers.​

 

[JLCwrites]

If the vocabulary is right for the age, word count will be ancillary. In other words, don't sweat it too much. Wait and see what the agent or publishers say.

 

[Elektra]

I can't remember where I read it, but I believe I've seen that it's allowable for MG targeted toward boys to be a bit shorter than normal.

 

[Soccer Mom]

I can't remember where I read it, but I believe I've seen that it's allowable for MG targeted toward boys to be a bit shorter than normal.

I've seen that too in some of SCBWI's guildelines.

 

[auntybug]

Thanks for this gang! It pays to go back though the threads - I was gonna start a new one.