9) What is the typical word count for a young adult novel? If you have any comments, please leave them below. He had helpful directions to the AR BookFinder website, which (among other things, such as quizzes and ratings) helpfully has the word counts of hundreds of books. I’ve drafted book 2, which is 150K words, so I don’t think I can plausibly combine the first two books and try to convince a publisher to take a risk on a 200K-word first novel. Secondly is the strange revelation that Lord of the Rings, generally regarded as the ‘first epic fantasy’ series, is handily beaten by A Song of Ice and Fire (no surprise there), but also beaten by the Twilight Saga. Great post! I’ve been working on parts of it for years and finally find myself able to assemble all of the pieces into something coherent. - Cozy Mysteries - 70,000-85,000 words
I’ll have writing jags where I get a ton done, and then big dry spells. Instead of truly focusing on story; cut or add length later, I began to obsess at the beginning of each writing session over “How many words am I at today?” instead of story. Thanks Tiffany! A full request is a great sign your story is on the right track, but don't be surprised if it doesn't result in a lot of individualized feedback. Almost 40% of published young adult writers don't have a regular writing routine. So…several friends have graciously offered to test read (after I built hype by semi-frequent facebook posts about the progress of that novel that I’ve been writing for years and years….). There are various methods you can try, but even companies like Amazon only offer the page count (which varies by edition). Have a question about the publishing industry? Books for readers aged 5-8 typically sit around 20,000 words. Chapter Books - 5,000-10,000 words
Thank you for the research and info! This week in Ask the Agent, I’ll explore and dissect two of the industry’s mysteries, straight from the shoulder. While others insist on somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 for a first time author. Adult - 70,000-115,000 words
I think that the shortest and longest books on your list are anomalies. I am ALWAYS obsessing about word count and wondering how long other YA novels (of the trilogy variety) are. And YOU are worthy of the work. I asked the authors if their books went on to become series. Most of them say things like “there is no should” and “however long it takes to tell your story”. Congrats on your huge writing accomplishments! It’s rare, rare, rare, rare, rare (x1000) that self-published books are ever re-published by traditional editors.