Is 40k too short for a YA book? (new posts at #22)

Depends on the genre. Books with fantasy elements take a good amount of world building, so a lot of agents will assume it's not well fleshed out.

I think some agents will definitely reject on the basis of low word count. I've read a lot of query critiques where an agent comments on wordcount and says they're happy to see the writer is familiar with the conventions of their genre

I think that's on the lower limit that I keep seeing for YA books. But, if it's an awesome book and you think it works at 40K, why worry too much about the word count? Have faith in your writing and go for it without stressing about ticking all the right boxes (that might be terrible advice, by the way!).

I queried a 35k novel last year. I believe that it was Colleen Lindsay who sent me a note saying that I should lengthen it out. The others were form rejections. Of course, my query sucked and the novel sucked so that might have something to do with it too

I've seen a few debut novelists get by on short word counts. I believe that Hannah Moskowitz's debut clocked in at 44k. And Lauren Strasnick's debut was around 35k. But they write contemporary which can get by on a shorter length.

I just wanna pop in and say I'm jealous of everyone who can finish a book at 40k or lower. Extremely jealous. That is an art.

But for your question, I'm just going to echo everyone else. It just depends on the genre. Depends on the agent, too. And your query. It's good to have some betas check it out, see if anything's missing and can be added. If there isn't a thing worth adding then that's what risks are for

From a publishing standpoint, yes... Or so I've heard. There are literary books published that are around that wordcount. I can't speak for others but readers like me would be fine with that. Our attention span allows so only so much. Hehe the target would be 50-60K. It also may depend on the agent's taste. One lit agent I was looking up prefers an ms of over 60K(regardless of genre). An agent will work with your ms to help bulk it up if need be.

I think so. I have a 35K novel (well it's a novella but I was shooting for a novel) in YA but it's too short...I don't know what I'm going to do with it in revisions...

Only one way to find out: test the waters. Though adding about 10-15k words if you can without totally messing up the story certainly wouldn't hurt.

I got my first agent at 35K and she's working on a deal right now. Unfortunately she can't represent my second one which I was encouraged by a few agents that my concept was good but my word count needed to be more. It was at 35K too, but I was able to pump it up to 52K. I subbed it to a few more to see what would happen and luckily I have a few more interested. I really think word count matters in the literary world...maybe not so much commercial. Alotta the big publishers (that only take agented work) want to see a chunkier book. E-pubs are totally different...you can definitely get away with that type of word count then.

No.

I think 40K is fine for contemporary YA.

The only part here that is tripping me up is where you state that your story is "almost complete" because I'm okay with all the rest.

I like you jaxymack. You're tough, smart, and I think you probably have a good book or seventeen in you.

But I wouldn't count those words just yet.

Finish. Set it down. Read and edit. Let some good, trusty critters rip through it. Then maybe subject it to the process again.

See if that word count is still 40K. See if your betas care. See if YOU care the third time you slog through it.

If you're still asking it might matter. If you're not as worried about it, Smish is right.

Hey JaxyMack - I have a 38,800 word count contemporary YA novel that I feel is "done." I'm worried about the same thing. Lemme know if you're looking for a beta.

jaxymack said:

Would an agent see that and immediately hit the "Reject" button? My story is almost complete, and I don't think it can go much beyond that length!

Thanks

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Not always. 40k is the acceptable minimum word count for a YA novel, so technically that in itself isn't a problem. It really depends on the kind of story you're telling and how much time is needed to tell it.

My first MS is 45k and it's in the publication process now

There are small presses that consider 40k word lengths, so if you can't find an agent, you can always look into one of them.

Jenny Valentine's Finding Violet Park (or Me, The Missing and the Dead as it is known in the US) was a 36k debut novel and it won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. I loved it and didn't think it needed to be longer. It's contemporary comedy/drama. JV's later novels are a little longer, but I'm not sure if any of them top 50k.

It can be done, if you have the right book and it is the best length to tell the story.

There are lots of YA books that are only 40K or less. And LOTS of them come from the major publishers. Many publishers have lines of Hi-Lo books for YA and those are typically less than 30K words.

What Smish said. It definitely can be done and has been. Not so much with fantasy but with everything else for sure.

I'm not an expert at all, but much like what everyone else has said, it depends on which genre.. so which is it ?

eyeblink said:

Jenny Valentine's Finding Violet Park (or Me, The Missing and the Dead as it is known in the US) was a 36k debut novel and it won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. I loved it and didn't think it needed to be longer. It's contemporary comedy/drama. JV's later novels are a little longer, but I'm not sure if any of them top 50k.

It can be done, if you have the right book and it is the best length to tell the story.

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I am hugely in favour of 40K novels as an underwriter myself. However, just to pick up the example of FVD, it was published in 2007 with a UK agent. It's only literally been over the last couple of years that the line between MG and YA has been defined in the UK. Before, YA was pretty much 11+. Although some of the really edgy books (Melvin Burgess, for example) might have been classified as "older", but back pre-2007, you could make the argument that FVD was actually MG in the UK.

The_Ink_Goddess said:

I am hugely in favour of 40K novels as an underwriter myself. However, just to pick up the example of FVD, it was published in 2007 with a UK agent. It's only literally been over the last couple of years that the line between MG and YA has been defined in the UK. Before, YA was pretty much 11+. Although some of the really edgy books (Melvin Burgess, for example) might have been classified as "older", but back pre-2007, you could make the argument that FVD was actually MG in the UK.

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True, Finding Violet Park is on the borderline between upper MG and lower YA. JV's later novels are certainly YA - Broken Soup and The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight definitely are as they contain swearing amongst other things. The Ant Colony is an odd one - of its two narrators, one is an older teenager (17 or 18 IIRC) while the other is a 10-year-old girl. (Someone please film it and get Ramona Marquez to play her while she's still of age.)

A couple critters in Query Letter Hell are giving me a hard time about a YA thriller that 52K -- they said it is too short.

I could probably add an epilogue and get it to 54 or 54, but I approached my chapters like flash fiction. I haven't sent out many queries yet, and the ones I did were pretty bad (before I posted them in hell).

I really feel the book is fine at 52K...but now I'm doubting that. This thread was a little helpful, but I'd love more insight.

I haven't read the rest of this thread, but just in response to your post, SaraC - We Were Liars, I think, is only about 50K. Now that was more of a psychological suspense story without a very complex plot. I don't know what your story is like, but bottom line, I wouldn't say that you can never do a 50K story. All that really matters is if 50K isn't enough to do the plot service.

50k isn't an impossible sell, but it will be more difficult.

A trick I've found is to look for places where time passes without anything happening. If you say, "a few days later" or "a few hours later" or anything like that, I've found there was a way to push another scene or more action in there. Filling in all those "quiet time" holes took my WIP from ~65k to 77k.

40K is too short for anything above MG.

50K is the "floor" for most novel counts.

A tightly written YA *might* get some hits at less than 50K, but it's got to be phenomenal, and the word count needs to be close. SPEAK's word count is less than 48K, but there's no telling how long it was when it was pitched, or if it was edited down to that number.

There's really no such thing as upper and lower YA. Upper and lower MG exist due to reading levels and reading proficiency, which can vary widely in a just a couple of years/grades. Once you're into the high school levels (14-18), that variance isn't as wide.