Heh! yeah it's about money. and it might actually get worse, because there's really only one printer left in the US, and if they decide that they want nonsense, there's not a lot anyone can do.
I misunderstood that so hard that I spent at least two minutes trying to understand how there could be only one actual printer in the whole country. Like, the box on the end of the desk that's always out of toner. And one jaded publisher sitting next to it grumbling, "That's it. You can feckin' Kindle it from here on out."
I'm sorry, but are you obliged by a publisher to present a manuscript under that length? Cause let me tell you, 100.000 words is short "in my book", as long as it's well written. Last book I read had 200.000 words.
Unfortunately, like @hyacinthe was saying, it's all about the production/distribution costs for new authors. It costs a LOT of money (relatively) to print, bind, warehouse, ship a book. And that price scales in tiers with the number of pages for production, with the physical weight of the book for shipping, and with the square footage (inchage?) to store it, whether in a warehouse or stocked on a shelf. And for an unproven commodity like a new author, the investment isn't worth the upfront leverage. Doesn't matter for the big authors who can sell a bajillion copies of whatever they want, but for the new dudes, that word count is like an executioner's axe. It will be verrrrrry interesting to see how this evolves over the next few years. I wouldn't be shocked to see physical books erode even further as brick and mortar entertainment venues (and products) lose market share to their digital equivalents. There's definitely an economic breaking point that could relegate book stores and movie theaters into niche territory. And physical books into more of a luxury item. The tipping point there will most likely be how much more a consumer will pay for a physical book over an ebook. Some people will pay damn near anything, but the majority will likely choose to spend their $20 on two ebooks rather than one physical one. I'm making those numbers up, but you get the point.
Honestly, I haven't bought a physical fiction book in the past three years. I still buy hard copy cookbooks because I like the pretty pictures printed at full size on paper, but for mostly text books I'm an ebook girl all the way. It's the same thing for me as with music and movies - I haven't bought a CD or DVD since I can remember. I just can't get past not only the price difference, but having everything so easily portable/accessible on my phone or laptop. I'm old and life is getting short, so I'm happy to pay more for convenience at this point in my life.
Preaching to the choir, mate. I'm chipping away at my story right now (and managing to cut it down, somehow!) but it doesn't read like a 109k monster. Of course, I'm biased. But Lord Of The Rings is well over the industry standard and that did pretty well. However, you'll notice that I am not actually JRR Tolkien and as @Homer Potvin already stated, publishers aren't gonna risk it on some wannabe. I'd bite my thumb at the word limit too, if I didn't want to be able to say I got "legitimately" published. Purely for the kick of being able to say that, mind you. If I ever manage another book, I'm not gonna have a problem with digital-only, or other options. And to be honest, this current thing is gonna et published one way or another too, but I'm aiming above my league to start with. I still buy physical CDs sometimes, because I want to have them, but every time I actually play music, I use the MP3s on my phone. Begrudgingly.
I do plan to just be using my first name initials. If JRR, EL and JK are any indication, that should help. If it doesn't, I'm going with the name change until somebody calls me out on it.
Makes me wonder what happened to the apparently Victorian tendency for people to have 2 or 3 middle names, like James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Now I want to look into why that happened and why it stopped.
My straight guess would be a de-emphasis on carrying on certain family names as the aristocracy became "diluted" into the peon gene pool. Could be totally wrong on that.
Honestly, I'll take anything I can get. A thousand words is, like, two sentences for me. Yes, I have a problem. I was actually doing pretty well with the cuts in the beginning, but for every thing I take out now, I need to bridge a logic-gap somewhere else.
It might be time for a developmental edit. You might think about removing entire scenes and redistributing the necessary info to other scenes. Lol I know, easy for me to say, right?
I've been cutting like Freddy Krueger, I think. The real problem is probably that the base story is a dime a dozen deal-with-the-devil story. The only thing that makes it any different, if you'll forgive the arrogance, is my personal brand of fluff. Fluff, which now needs to be cut to make quota. Right now, I've got about 15k left to squeeze at least 25k of stuff in. It's oddly nerve wracking. I doubt I can stay under 90k, but I'll just finish this revision and then bring in a professional.
Why is the number of words a problem? If the story needs to be 100k+, then let it be 100k+. No sense in shortening it just for the sake of doing so. Look at Robert Jordan. Word count never bothered him.
Robert Jordan published in a time so long ago by publishing standards it might as well be the fossil record. you get to publish a 700 page book when you've proven you can sell a 384 page book.
@Naomasa298 That. I wanna maximize my chances of getting trad published. Of course, I use 'maximize' lightly, but years of playing RPGs taught me that even a 2% stat increase can make the difference. And we all know life is exactly like videogames. If, however, it turns out I can't live with the revision and subsequent professional edit, I'll go digital. I'm guessing word count matters less there.
Some posts back @hyacinthe explained to me that it's mainly a money-issue, which might just annoy me a little bit more. However, I was talking to a brain specialist a while back (not for me, he was a guest at a show) and research seems to show that with the short bursts in which we receive "information" these days, attention spans have actually deteriorated. Add to that the fact that interruptions from your phone or other attention seeking devices can potentially break a person's concentration down to 40%, I guess we should be happy we're not limited to ten pages, of which two should be pictures.
