I have a love-hate relationship with word counts. (Just look at the word count of this post!)
On one hand, word count guidelines offer a concrete metric in an industry that often seems to rely solely on personal taste, timing, and luck. It’s helpful for authors to know that most traditionally published picture books are well under 1,000 words, or that middle grade novels are trending shorter as publishers contend with decreasing reading levels, not to mention rising paper costs. And I’ve sent authors to agent Jennifer Laughran’s brilliant post about word count more times than I can count.
But as a children’s book editor, I also know that a manuscript’s word count says very little about the story itself. In fact, I’d argue that word count is actually one of the least important pieces of information about a manuscript.
Envision two printed manuscripts, sitting side by side, both with exactly the same word count. Does that mean the two books are equally strong? Of course not. It doesn’t even mean they are intended for the same audience. A poem about war and PTSD may be the same length as a picture book, but you wouldn’t give it to a six year old. And yet, we often talk about word counts in this way, as if they’re rigid measurements rather than an estimated, elastic range.
So why talk about word counts at all? Well, one reason is that word counts can be tangible symptoms of intangible issues. The key words here are can be. A story that is underdeveloped or unsatisfying might have a below-average word count…or it might not. Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog has 55,000 fewer words than her novel Walk Two Moons; however, the difference in word count reflects the difference between a novel in verse and a novel in prose. Likewise, a story with slow pacing, an overwhelming number of characters, or pages of exposition might have an above-average word count…or it might not. Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is nearly 600 pages longer than her book Piranesi, yet both have won multiple awards praising their characters, plots, and world building. Ultimately, a book’s word count matters far less than whether or not an author is using that word count effectively.
When it comes to the publishing process, word counts also matter because printed books are a physical product. The shorter the book, the more magnified the word count. A picture book with 15 words per page offers a much different reading experience than one with 50 words per page—particularly when the book is read aloud, for readers with shorter attention spans, or for kids who are just learning to read. (If you’d like to experience this yourself, try reading a recently published picture book aloud and then following that with the 1960s classic Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, which clocks in at 1,688 words. Which reading experience do you prefer?)
And while a middle grade reader may not notice whether a book is 256 pages or 288 pages, they are sure to notice whether a book is 256 pages or 416 pages. The 416-page book will also take up more space on library/school/store bookshelves and will be more expensive to produce than the 256-page book—both in terms of paper, but also in terms of editing, copyediting, proofreading, audiobook production, and potential translations. (On the production side, economies of scale also come into play; printing 100,000 copies costs less per book than printing 10,000, which is why word count matters less for bestselling series.)
So what does this mean for authors? My primary advice is to focus on the story first. While authors need to be aware of the conventions of their intended genre and category, worrying too much about word count before you’ve written a complete manuscript can be stifling, leading you to second-guess the value of every line and scene. Like the old adage says, you can’t revise a blank page. And while revision is never easy, it’s much easier to adjust an existing story’s word count than to try to hit a certain number with your first draft—or to maintain that number over the course of revisions.
Once you have a complete draft, you can then take a closer look at its word count. In particular, it helps to know whether your manuscript’s word count could point to a disconnect between the story and its target market. By disconnect, I don’t mean a 5-10% difference; I mean a word count far enough outside of the typical range to suggest that you might not be aware of your category’s current norms. Think: a 40,000 word chapter book (when most are under 15,000 words), a 2,000 word picture book (when most are well under 1,000 words), or a 5,000 word realistic middle grade novel (when most are over 25,000 words). Maybe there’s an obvious reason for the difference in your word count, like the above example of Love That Dog. Or perhaps your word count is a symptom of an area to consider in revision.
Seeking feedback and reading recently-published books in your target category can help you to get a sense of whether there’s an issue that needs to be addressed in your manuscript. Perhaps your picture book is trying to tell three different storylines instead of one; or maybe your chapter book would work better as a middle grade novel; or perhaps your middle grade novel’s plot and characters need to be further developed.
Once you’ve revised, sought feedback, and strengthened your manuscript as much as possible: remember that a great story is more important than a “perfect” word count. Agents and editors know that word counts aren’t set in stone. Many people can fill a Word document with a certain number of words; far fewer can tell a story that makes readers think, cry, laugh, scream, or fall in love. Focus on writing a book that falls into the second category, and the first becomes much less important.
Your Editor Friend,
Julie
P.S. You can use this website to find the word counts of most traditionally published kidlit (which is where I looked up the kid’s books in this post).