Am I an Outlier?

Depends on the genre, but higher word counts are becoming more common, especially in science fiction and fantasy.

aspiringauthor123 said:

Okay so clicking through this forum, I see a lot of people write between 40K and 60K. I am in the YA category but my word count is 103K completely finished and ready for querying. I've seen books in this category that hearty before ,like Divergent, but is it unusual? Will it turn off authors from wanting to read past my query and synopsis? Will it turn off beta readers for taking it on for critique?

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My YA came in at just shy of 110k and it came back from my betas as being a bit on the long side for a YA. I think it all depends, but I'm in the process of tightening it up with the aim to get it down to about 80k. That will get it down to about 350 pages or close to hopefully. Rather than 500... eek.

aspiringauthor123 said:

Okay so clicking through this forum, I see a lot of people write between 40K and 60K. I am in the YA category but my word count is 103K completely finished and ready for querying. I've seen books in this category that hearty before ,like Divergent, but is it unusual? Will it turn off authors from wanting to read past my query and synopsis? Will it turn off beta readers for taking it on for critique?

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Yes, it's unusual. It's less so if it's fantasy.

The first draft of my contemporary ended up around 90,000, once all was said and done. Naturally, I'm focusing on cutting a bit, but I'd keep it, if I could. I like longer books, personally, though.

I don't think it's weird at all if you're writing spec fic. If you're writing contemporary, then yes, that's pretty long.

If you're writing sci-fi or fantasy, I've seen a lot of agents say to try to keep it under 100k. You're barely over that so it should be fine.

My WIP is going to end up between 80k and 90k. I haven't gotten the same impression that most people are writing between 40 and 60k.

A dystopian YA is going to be such a hard sell to begin with, you'd be well-served to make sure you need every one of those words.

A quick sample of some YA dystopian word counts (from http://www.renaissance.com/store/quiz_home.asp?c=1):

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins): 99,750
Divergent (Veronica Roth): 105,143
Delirium (Lauren Oliver): 114,476
Matched (Ally Condie): 89,124
The Maze Runner (James Dashner): 101,182
Legend (Marie Lu): 75,464
The Selction (Kiera Cass): 80,248
Unwind (Neal Shusterman): 95,297

You can look up others if you're interested. They have most popular YA titles listed.

I would say your word count is not out of line, IF that's how long the story really needs to be. That's always my thing. The story should be the length it needs to be whether that's 30,000, 90,000, or even 200,000 words (though that will be a tough sell).

If that's how long the story needs to be, it's fine. But paying attention to every word is important. I'd say go through with a mission to tighten, cut, and extend where need be. It helps length and quality alike.

As long as the book can be opened to any random page and every word is as brilliant as the one that precedes it, you're in the clear. If not, it's too long.

Heh, as someone whose story keeps getting rejected by editors "because dystopia is just dead", I'd worry more about the genre than the word count. (My word count was 73K when I was querying. After agent edits, we plumped it up to 90K.)

aspiringauthor123 said:

With all due respect, I disagree with those editors, in my opinion I do not think a genre can be dead. Over saturated, absolutely, this one is, but dead? No. I know this makes my-one-out-of-a-million manuscript that much more difficult to publish but I will give it a chance. I have written in other genres before, and liked them, but this one stuck with a good story, so we'll see. But I defiantly plan on squeezing my way in if I can. I've come this far so I will query and go from there. I do appreciate your comment though! Have you closeted that manuscript?

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When they say the market is "dead", what they mean is that nobody is buying it right now. Of course it can be revived, but I doubt it'll happen anytime soon. (Although my hope is that it will!) My agent actually shopped the book as YA fantasy and not dystopian, but the editor comments are pretty much along the lines of "This is too dystopian, and dystopian is dead. Does the writer have any other non-dystopian books?" So we know the editors aren't rejecting because of the writing.

But while she shopped that book, I worked on a whole different book (YA contemporary suspense). When I finished the new book, I gave it to my agent, and we decided to put the YA fantasy/dystopian to rest until the market revives. Now we're in the process of editing the YA contemporary. So we haven't completely given up on the first book. She still has a few editors she can sub it to, but she's waiting until the dystopian market is more favorable.

My advice isn't to give up on the book, but maybe query it as "YA spec fic". If it has scifi elements, I'd query it as "YA scifi". If it has fantasy elements, I'd query it as "YA fantasy". (When I queried, I queried mine as YA fantasy.)

Putputt said:

When they say the market is "dead", what they mean is that nobody is buying it right now.

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No, what they really mean is THEY don’t know where to sell it. “X is dead” is just a convenient excuse for passing. The “deadest” subgenre magically wakes up when the next great blockbuster in that style appears.

Write the book you love, THEN worry about selling it. And meanwhile write your next book. Don't censor yourself because of possible market mishaps.

What genres exactly is your story? Is it fantasy with a dystopian sub-genre? The vast majority of dystopia is science fiction, or else it's only fantasy because of Clarke's Third Law. If you can pitch it as fantasy, especially high or epic fantasy, you might have a better shot, but from the way you were talking it seemed like it was standard sf dystopia.

Laer Carroll said:

No, what they really mean is THEY don’t know where to sell it. “X is dead” is just a convenient excuse for passing. The “deadest” subgenre magically wakes up when the next great blockbuster in that style appears.

Write the book you love, THEN worry about selling it. And meanwhile write your next book. Don't censor yourself because of possible market mishaps.

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Before I went on sub, this waa what I believed. "Trends don't matter! I just have to write the best book I can and hope for the best!" I still believe in doing that, but now I also believe in maximizing my chances (for example, like I said, if it's possible to query the book as fantasy or scifi other than dystopia, do that).

Fwiw, an excerpt from one of my rejections...
"I loved the story and the characters, especially (the MC). However, the hard truth of the matter is that nobody is buying YA dystopia at the moment. If the writer has books in a different genre, I would love to be able to read them."

I'm also interning for a different agent who is kind enough to answer a lot of my questions. I once asked him, "What would you do if you were getting these kinds of rejections from editors?" He said, "Oh dear. Nobody is buying YA dystopian right now. At some point, I'm sure the market will revive, but until then, I would stop subbing the book and focus on the YA Contemporary. You don’t want to go against the market, because you probably won't get the best deal possible."

So...maybe you're right and "nobody is buying YA dystopian" is just an excuse. But my assumption is that editors at publishing houses know better than I do what the book sellers want and don't want. I'm not the one who meets regularly with book sellers and gets to hear first hand what they're looking for, so I tend not to call bullshit on what they say is and isn't selling.

What it means is that the editor doesn't think they can get a good enough P&L to convince their bosses to let them acquire the book. That's not the market being unreasonable, that's someone looking at the potential ROI and deciding they don't want to risk it. Publishing is a low-margin business; they can't afford to take on a book they aren't sure they can sell.


Just because some random self-publisher gets luck with a book, that doesn't mean the editor is wrong. Publishing is a guessing game, yes, but if you throw a few hundred YA dystopians at the wall, there's a decent chance one of them might stick. But no one wants to be one of the other 499 publishers who didn't even make their money back. And that's a completely valid position.

Just want to throw in something to keep in mind (based on experience), that if your MS has a lot of traditional dystopian elements, calling it another genre is not exactly a catch-all solution. It may save you from auto-rejects when agents see the "d word," but no matter what you call it, agents are savvy and will be able to tell from the rest of your query whether or not it's too dystopian for them and editors. Rejections or acceptances are likely going to come based on the premise of the MS, regardless of whatever label you try to slide it by under. Ie, they would request knowing full well it's pretty dystopian but thinking it has merit and unique elements even with the genre fatigue. All the more reason to make sure you're sending only your best work out--and that you highlight in the query what makes your MS unique!

(This is not even necessarily directed at you, OP, because you're clearly tenacious enough to query no matter what, but also for people lurking who have dystopian MSs)