What words do you count?

I always just click on Word Count and go from there. No one ever said, "Your off by 200 words!" Plus you would round up, so not 75237 but 75,250 or 75,500.

So, I'm totally new at all of this and may be completely off track, but here's what I found on word counts.

http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/what-is-a-word/

I used it on a few different books I've read recently just to get a feel for it. Good luck.

Does anyone just round to the thousand? I mean, if mine ends up being 75,631, I'd probably just say 76,000... I highly doubt the agent really cares about those extra 369 words... After all, that's not even 1% of the entire manuscript, it's like .4% ..?

I'm assuming this is nonfiction. I'm also assuming this is very academic. With this amount of words in your footnotes, I'd include both a word count for the narrative and a word count for all the footnotes. Glossary and table of contents numbers are not that high that they'd cause problems.

The reason you want to separate this out is because you fit a lot more words in footnotes than in regular writing. Books are put together in signatures, which consist of say 16 pages. Normally you figure 250 words per page. At 250 words per page, this means something like 80 pages, or 5 signatures. But because footnotes can be printed smaller, a publisher can figure more words, for example say 400 words per page. By doing this, we bring you down to about 50 pages, or 3 signatures. Think a publisher would notice the difference in cost?

For EQUINE LIABILITY, I faced limitations on print size for footnotes, endnotes, and indexing to get rid of a signature. But both the editor and I could live with that limitation there as opposed to the main text.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

exm said:

Does anyone just round to the thousand? I mean, if mine ends up being 75,631, I'd probably just say 76,000... I highly doubt the agent really cares about those extra 369 words... After all, that's not even 1% of the entire manuscript, it's like .4% ..?

Click to expand...

I do that. More words are likely to be removed during the editing process than any rounding would eliminate. Agents are looking for accurate ballpark figures. I agree the agent doesn't care about those extra 369 words, and if they see a big round number they realize it's (in all likelihood) an estimate.

Of course, agents all have different opinions and quirks. I'm sure there are some out there that like the exact figure... I've just never encountered them.

I did both footnotes and endnotes. Endnotes were used for the legal citations, while footnotes were used were I needed to clarify things in the text. For instance, I comment on state supreme courts, and have a footnote that New York's state supreme court is called the Court of Appeals. Ultimately, footnotes went on the pages that they applied to, while the endnotes were all at the end of the book (the could also go at the end of each chapter).

Mainly for the sake of both my eyes and my editor's, footnotes were done in the normal font during the editing stage. They pretty much read as normal text. The endnotes were done in 14pt type during editing. This enabled us to see them a lot clearer. The proofreader especially appreciated it. Then when the book was put onto proofs, my editor just switched everything around to the type faces that she wanted. My editor was experienced with nonfiction and knew had to calculate the end size of this stuff, although she was not familiar with the weird quirks of legal writing.

If you're relying on Word to correctly count legal citations, especially with people who aren't familiar with them, don't. For example, Smith v. Jones, 110 NH 143, 423 A2d 564 (NH) counts as ten words. Normally words average five letters, and if you count this that way, you only get seven words. Problem is this will mean you'll need 30% less space than you estimate based upon word count.

I took a look at the final version (although not the actual book) for EQUINE LIABILITY. I have 10,390 words in endnotes, although only a little over 50,000 characters. It ran for about fifteen pages. That runs nearly 700 words per page, which is one reason why endnotes and footnotes need to be separated for word count.

However, depending on the book proposal, any publisher is going to automatically assume footnotes and endnotes. I didn't discuss them at the proposal stage. Towards the end of the process, the editor and I had disagreements about the indexing. I wanted a detailed state index and she wanted none. Compromised on a reduced state index that runs less than a page.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Mom said:

I do that. More words are likely to be removed during the editing process than any rounding would eliminate. Agents are looking for accurate ballpark figures. I agree the agent doesn't care about those extra 369 words, and if they see a big round number they realize it's (in all likelihood) an estimate.

Of course, agents all have different opinions and quirks. I'm sure there are some out there that like the exact figure... I've just never encountered them.

Click to expand...

Yes the loss of words to editing was kind of what I was thinking too! Good to know rounding is generally allowed... I don't know why, it just bothers me to put in my query letter "65,430" words.. it feels like TMI or something...

Because of your subject matter, I think any agent or publisher will assume you're going to have quite a few footnotes. Personally I don't think in this case I'd put down the word count for the footnotes. I'd have the information available for when asked, but other than that, I'd figure on the publisher dealing with the mechanics of this.

Word count is what determines page count. That's why it matters to agents and publishers. But here, anyone familiar with publishing can do some quick calculations. Let's say your word count is 75,000 words for the main body of the book. That's 300 pages, more or less.

But we're going to need room for footnotes, a table of contents, index, forward, acknowledgments, and maybe some pictures. So let's call the page count 350 pages. That's going to cost X to produce, which means the publisher has to charge Y to make a profit. But will the market support a price of Y for your book. That's going to be the question a publisher has to answer.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe