Exactly. But, also, it shouldn't be equal if typed in accordance with typical publisher submission guidelines for mss, which require double spaced lines.
It is a moot point. Only word count matters. That makes perfect sense. However, I'm curious because I've read a few long novels recently that I know were first efforts by their authors. Most novels I read DO seem to conform to the industry standard, but Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History' was far and above that length if I remember correctly, and I think David Foster Wallace and even Diana Gabaldon (a historical fiction writer) had novels that all seem grossly distended with regard to size/word count, etc. Is this a thing that happens only rarely? And what could cause an agent or editor to accept a manuscript that is so clearly outside the normal submission guidelines? I'm sorry, but I'm very new to all this and I'm just trying to wrap my head around it.
Well, yes, if you're already renowned and published, and have won a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, you can do whatever you want as far as word count. For the rest of us, however, it's a much tougher sell.
You do: the paperback is about 660 pages. But this was, of course, a quite extraordinary and highly exceptional first novel. I think it can be any one (or more) of a group of reasons, all of them most exceptional. A highly successful agent falling in love with a manuscript can occasionally - "by force of contacts" - produce publication of something outside the normal parameters (look at J.K. Rowling's first book, in whose story there was even an element of a "suffering publisher rolling the dice" - very successfully indeed, to put it mildly, as it turned out). Whatever "principles"/"guidelines" can be deduced, alluded to, quoted and discussed, there have always been (and perhaps will always be) very occasional exceptions which, because of their quality and/or for other sometimes indiscernible factors, might just become successful. What it's easy to overlook is the magnitude of the number of all the others that didn't: one hasn't heard of any of them, more or less by definition. From the author's perspective, it's perhaps partly about stacking the deck in one's favour, rather than against oneself.
First, it will be a long shot to get them to even consider reading something so out of the norm. Remember, some publishers (mainly fantasy and SF) say long manuscripts are fine. Fewer agents. But from the slush pile/query pile...editors and agents look for a reason to say no to a submission and move onto the next. That being said, the story, be it the synopsis or query letter, and the first page and chapters will really, really have to capture the interest of the agent/editor. I know, it has to work that way for any book, but a very long novel...it has to go a step above the normal capture of interest.
...and the mitigating factor there was a hefty one indeed... tartt had dated brett easton ellis and he recommended her and 'the secret history' to agent amanda urban, which resulted in the book being published...
That is interesting - thank you. (I do think it's a great book, I must say. For me, it's a real "I wish I'd written that"-er ... which I don't honestly feel about any of his ).
It varies a bit from genre to genre, but for a "novel", I think around 80,000 - 110,000 words is fairly normal. I've seen some prominent agents, these days, specifying that they slightly prefer and encourage the lower end of that range, around 80,000 - 95,000. In some genres, I think up to about 120,000/125,000 is considered pretty acceptable.
Just one more thing, if you all don't mind? I was reading an article last night that said something to the effect that a word count listed on programs such as Word and Open Office are NOT the same thing as the word count 'estimates' cited in submission guidelines. I am not precisely sure what this means, but it was something about the fact that a Word program counts spaces as well as words (??) and 'characters' have meaning as well. According to the article, the norm for most computer manuscripts (in a font such as Courier) is usually 10 words per line, leading to a typical count of @ 200 words per page. Also, 12 point fonts were mentioned, but I do not know which font size is most desirable for submitted material. My real, gut-twisting concern, here, is that I've been working on a project that I started two or three years ago before I knew anything about publisher guidelines. Not knowing if I'd ever actually try to get it published (and still not knowing), I checked my word count on a regular program last night and found that the (almost) finished product clocked in at 224,000 on Open Office. I am currently reeling from the shock and trying to make sense of how I could have missed this. After peeling myself off the keyboard I did the reading described above and recalculated my MS manually according to a few sample pages that were 210---250 words long, bringing the total count to within the higher (but still acceptable) range of what is usually required for submissions. I have no idea how I could have arrived at such a different number, OR whether such a calculation is deemed legitimate, OR whether an agent/editor would accept a manual count based on word per line/word per page estimates, OR how any of this is really done in the real-life publishing world, LOL. I'm sure I can chip my MS down from a high- end count since I haven't finished editing yet---but I don't know how in the world I am going to take it down by half if a computer count is the only one that matters. I guess I should have considered this before, but I never thought it would come so far and I really only have experience writing magazine articles. I guess if I'm screwed, I'm screwed. I'll just have to think about it some more and see what (if anything) I can bear to part with in the end, LOL. Ugh!! Well, thanks again for all your help. This is a really great forum!
When submission guidelines talk about estimates, I believe they're talking about rounding the word count to the nearest hundred (so 77,777 would round to 77,800). Editors/agents don't need to know the exact word count. You can trust Word's count by the way.
The only count you must be careful with is the character count (which is irrelevant when talking manuscripts). This is because there are two versions, one including spaces and one without them. The word count is probably based on pairs of whitespace around characters (if a group of characters has either a space, tab or newline on each side), though that's just what I think based on what would be most efficient programming-wise (in my experience, which doesn't count as much).
I believe this is right. At least, it's exactly what I've been told by someone who used to work for Microsoft and knows all about this kind of stuff.
agents and editors generally assume you're using the word count from ms word, since it's the lingua franca of the publishing world... and yes, the word count must be rounded off... if you give an exact count, you'll be branding yourself a clueless amateur...
These days publishers accept the WP word count. But in reality, the publishers are more interested in how many pages long the book is because one writer, who uses dense prose and long paragraphs, would have a significantly fewer pages than another writer who uses short paragraphs, and thus has more short lines, giving fewer words per page and more pages for the same word count. And paper costs more than ink so that matters. But strangely, the publishers expressed that length in terms of a word count derived by: • Set the font to Courier 12 point, which is typewriter font and fixed spacing. • Set the number of lines per page to exactly twenty-five—the number of lines a double spacing typewriter produces per page. • Count the total number of pages in the document with that setting and multiply by 250 to get the publisher's standard word count. • Some publishers wanted a half page added for each chapter to account for the white space at the top of the chapter opening. That gives you the number of manuscript pages were it produced on a typewriter, and while the number of pages of the finished product will be different, depending on the number of lines and font size, it gave a standardized number that publishers could use to estimate the size and cost to produce for any given manuscript. I'm really glad they don't ask for that anymore.
Yes, but also keep in mind their layout people have their own tricks for adjusting the pagination. Word count is a suggested range, and they only need the exact count once the work is accepted. There's really no point in them nitpicking to that degree on submissions. They must love James Patterson with his tiny chapters )and anyne who emulates him).
