Wow, people submit on floppy disk? I assume they won't also accept "chiselled into stone tablet" submissions either? Mind you, a steampunk audiobook that comes on wax cylinder... hmmm...
I came across some agencies that will only accept paper submissions and I skipped right over them. I don't want to work with dinosaurs.
Oh, dear. I do hope the present is a transitional period in agenting/publishing. It really looks as if you have to 'write to order,' doesn't it? How bloody boring is that? And you have to stick to Word's idea of word count? Well, what if you don't write in Word? I use Pages. Will those counts be the same? Will agents only accept MS offerings written in Word? Hi diddly dee ...self publishing for me....
Nah, as long as your word count's in the right ballpark they don't care. Well, except for these dinosaurs. Most of them do want it in .doc format, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to open it, but you can do that online for free if your programme won't save as .doc.
I was kind of speaking rhetorically, after reading through this thread. I just get so fed up with the 'requirements' ...that have nothing to do with whether a story is worth while or not. I am at present reading an MS from a fellow who has just written a fantastic historical novel. In fact, it's one of the best historical novels I've read in ages, and I'm totally absorbed by it. It doesn't feel like a beta read at all. However, his word count is hovering at around 250,000 words. What agent will look at it, based on that size word count? It's not a matter of trimming a few thousand words. He'll need to cut way more than half of his story, by all accounts, to get any agent to look at it. That's just crap. It really is. The story is a fast read, totally absorbing, intriguing characters, a cracking pace, lots of stuff to learn as well as enjoy—and I have no idea whatsoever how the story will end, but I'm dying to find out. In short, it encapsulates why I read ...and why I buy books. So what's wrong with this picture?
I think there are two issues with very large word counts: 1. It usually (obviously not always) indicates that the book is loosely written. I.e. not good. 2. Print costs for a 250k word book would wipe out any profit for pretty much all debut novels, unless you've found the next Harry Potter. #2 is less of an issue with ebooks, which is why I think word counts will become less important over the next... who knows. The industry is slow, as evidenced by the people still talking about floppy disks! Can you even buy computers that take floppy disks now?! I believe there have been debut authors with novels around 200k words, so it's not impossible. You know I agree with you on much of the arbitrariness of the whole publishing process, but in this case I do see their point. I imagine once you've seen enough 150k+ novels that could easily be trimmed to 80k, you stop bothering.
Me neither... but mostly because my printer (like all printers) is out to get me. Printers are the spawn of Satan.
No, I think I put that badly. I don't mean whaddle I do, I use Pages? I meant are agents now insisting that Word is the only kind of submission they'll accept? Pages can export in Word, if need be.
Here's an interesting link that shows word count of famous novels, past and present. Amazing how many of them are over 100,000 words, and are still in print. Amazing how many of them are well over 200,000 words and still in print. Amazing how many of these would have been rejected instantly, if they had been required to produce their word count in a query letter. http://commonplacebook.com/culture/literature/books/word-count-for-famous-novels/
I don't understand how that specific requirement is unreasonable? Word is standard for text documents in the UK/US and probably elsewhere too. All my clients specify that documents must be in Word or PDF, and I do the same when I'm using suppliers. The agents want a document they can open, and surely anyone submitting wants them to be able to open the document? You can produce .doc in free programmes very easily... Nope, in this instance, I'm not seeing what's wrong!
I think I went a bit over the top in objecting to this—I admit it—but the idea that the word count had to be in Word sort of set me off. MS Word is expensive to buy, and it's not necessary. Other wordprocessing programmes do an equally good job for a hell of a lot less—or for free—and produce work in formats that can be universally read. Obviously the agent has to be able to read the submission, but it doesn't have to be produced in Word. I work in Pages, yet I was able to send you my MS and you could read it, couldn't you? But whether my word count is in Word or not, I haven't a clue. I have no plan to download Word just so I can say it is.
Oh in that case I agree with you - specifying that you have to measure in Word is very odd. I'm guessing it's because @Sack-a-Doo! phrased it as "should I use estimated word count or MS Word's tool?". Everything I've read suggests it's normal to round up your word count even as much as to the nearest 10k.
I've got no problem with submitting on paper, as long as they ask for it before my access card and free printer credit expires But, to be fair, asking for submissions on paper might be less of a "dinosaur" thing, and more that it's a half-decent gatekeeper, surely? I mean, how much does it cost to print and post a full 3-400 page manuscript? £30? You're definitely going to cut down on (though admittedly not eliminate) people who've just smashed their head against the keyboard a few hundred times and said "that'll do"; you're introducing an extra step in the process where you get the author to ask themselves "Actually, am I happy with this? Is it worth me spending this money now, or having another few people look through it, maybe another redraft, and sending it off in a few months time instead?"
I've mentioned this before, but... You may have trouble with edits if you're not using MSWord - last time I tried one of the alternatives it didn't work well with "Track Changes" and the comments feature on long documents. If it works for you, great, but...
Just curious, but what was the alternative you tried? Reason I'm asking, is I've been looking into acquiring other wordprocessing software. I love Pages as it is, but they have removed one feature from their newest version (which we've got on our new laptop, but I haven't switched to on my desktop yet) that is very important to me. For some reason, Pages have removed support for Rich Text Format—which is such a universal format, my jaw hit the floor when I realised what they've done. I mean, only a year ago the MacFormat magazine was recommending saving documents in Rich Text to future-proof them. Still don't know WHY the Pages people have done this. RTF is one of the major formats that Kindle accepts, and I've always been able to switch my text documents to Kindle for easy reading using RTF. This keeps all the formatting such as bold text, smart quotes, italics, etc, which plain text does not. I can convert and export Pages text into Word, but for some reason the Word version loses all the extra formatting when exported to Kindle. (I've talked to Word users who have had similar problems with this, when sending directly to Kindle via Word.) Tracking changes, finding, replacing, etc is a skoosh on Pages, by the way. There is also a comments feature, but I've never used it.
I tried Libre Office. It worked really well for stuff I was typing into it fresh, but when I tried to open a document my editor had marked up using Word, it didn't work well. I can't remember what the problem was... I think it wouldn't do the "next change" thing, and I remember it froze at least a couple times.
I was pretty sure there'd be a problem. It's too bad because I have no intention of renting the new office software from Microsoft. And, of course, I'm not the only one, so older versions still available on eBay are jacked way up in price. A few years ago, I got a copy of MS Office 2003 for $35. Gone are the days.
Okay, so I'm slowly building a list of agents to submit to (man, that's got overtones). Anyway, I thought I'd read somewhere about a website similar to Predators & Editors, but for agents. Now, I can't seem to find anything about it. Anyone know of a site like this?
There are agent listings ON Predators and Editors - are you looking for something else? http://pred-ed.com/pubagent.ht
I realize this thread is a couple months old, but I've recently listened to the 2012 & 2013 BYU novel writing course lectures with Brandon Sanderson, and he and his guest lecturers (all published authors from various genres) agree - Terobi is correct about companies requiring print submissions as a gatekeeper. Companies that require print submissions will get fewer submissions, from more dedicated (or stuborn, or well represented) writers, thus allowing them to sort through the chaff quicker.
