Word Count?????

You can never really say never in this business, but I do think 60,000 is too low for the adult market, and you might get rejections based on length alone. If you can get it closer to 80,000 I think you'd have a better chance.

- Victoria

Jessica said:

My manuscript is 60K and I'm hoping to attract people who liked The Bluest Eye, The House on Mango Street, and Breath, Eyes, Memory, all of which are under 55K.

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Obviously there are always exceptions, but when starting out, your best chances are when you're between the 80K and 100K mark (give or take a bit).

Yeah, my first manuscript (chick lit) was 65k. Several said it was too short...blah!

50 -65 K is how my first drafts end up. Use a beta reader and they can tell you if you are going too fast and skimming over the story which is a habit of new novelists.
After a few passes my novels end up in the 80-90 K range.
But look at nickolas sparks. the notebook was really short and a lot of his fall well short of 80 K.

Are we talking MS Word wordcount, or courier 12pt, double spaced, 250 words per page, wordcount?

Jessica said:

Hello All,

Is a 60k word count too low for a) literary fiction, b) women's fiction, and / or c) commercial fiction? I've heard that anything below 80k is nearly always an automatic rejection.

My manuscript is 60K and I'm hoping to attract people who liked The Bluest Eye, The House on Mango Street, and Breath, Eyes, Memory, all of which are under 55K.

Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks!

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It's low, but there are bestselling novels below this length in every category you name. Lengthen if you want, but do not pad.

What Orion said is true. We can often skip over details to get to the meat of the scene or story. A good beta reader or critic would be able to point it out. Adding details necessary for the reader to 'get' the story or character isn't padding.

Breaking word count rules is really difficult. You have to really, really be confident that you have every word that should be in there if it is short, and that you have removed every word possible if it is long.

That being said, everyone thinks they are the exception.

I guess all in all, what I'm saying is your words count should be what it should be . . . but be darn sure it's the word count it should be, not the word count you are too lazy to change.

Maprilynne

My ms (contemp w/f) is at 65K. So far none of the agents I've queried has offered representation, but I've had a lot of positive comments from those who've rejected me. FWIW, none of them has commented about the low word count.

BUT, if the word count is nagging you that's probably something to listen to. It's your story, so you know better than anyone if it's complete or not. When I have concerns about a story, usually they turn out to be valid & I have to address them sooner or later. I always regret ignoring my gut feeling about something -- writing related or not.

Break a leg!

Jessica, it really varies from publisher to publisher and agent to agent. I agree with the others that this length may be just a bit low, but the most important factor is that you write the best story you can possibly write, and make it however long it needs to be to be that great story.

kk