Thread: Is my book too long?

My book is a coming of age novel spanning ten years. According to the MS word count tool, it is 117,000 words. I have heard that first time novelists should not go over 100,000 words. I really don't think I can cut out 17,000 words without majorly butchering the story. Any advice?

What genre is your novel? You can get away with that sort of thing if it's sci-fi or fantasy. Not sure about other genre's though.

It is literary fiction.

I don't think that it is anything to worry about too much. My novel is exceding 150,000 words not including all the grammer mistakes that I would have made. But its my first novel too so maybe one of the mods can help further?

What I have heard is that a first time novelist should not go above 100,000 words, because the agents and publishers don't want to take a chance on a newbie with a book that is expensive to produce. However, as I am revising my first draft, I find I am adding stuff, not taking away.

I think what I will end up doing is just write my story as best I can, not worry about length, and then if I keep hitting a brick wall (i.e. the agents won't even read it because it's too long), then I will self-publish.

First-time authors are given a ceiling of approximately 110,000 words. It varies with publishing companies and/or genre. Fantasy and sci-fi tend to be the biggest. Few publishers will consider taking on a 150K manuscript from a first-time author. You can save yourself some hassle by getting it in or around 100K. And always round down when you're telling prospective publishers your word count. If Microsoft Word says it's 117,543, you tell the publisher it is approximately 115,000 words. Word is usually out a couple of hundred, in any case. But don't say it's 100K if it happens to be 115K.

I was specifically told of this problem by two seperate agents. One of them was nice enough to send me this link: The Swivet [Colleen Lindsay]: All new & revised: On word counts and novel length
It goes into word length and breaks it up by genre. I found it quite useful. I hope you do too!

They also talk about how there are different ways to count words. MS word count vs. 250 X number of manuscript pages. If I do the second method I only have 102,000, much more manageable. But if I claim my book is 102,000, once they open the document they can check the word count on the computer and I am busted.

MS Word also states ". . ." to be three words.

I just read that article on book lengths. Great information. Thanks Power for posting it.

Originally Posted by Rustgold

MS Word also states ". . ." to be three words.

That is great news for me because I have quite a few of those.

Oh well. My book is currently 117,000 and during revision I'm expecting at least another 30,000 -- so I'm way out of the ballpark. I'm not going to worry about it though. I'm sure I can cut and combine a third of all that I write. A good editor will help as well.

Hey Woodroam! My first novel was at 188,000 and I cut it down to 116,000. And, I'm not finished yet. It's not as difficult as you might think, hacking and slashing away at a book. It's actually kind of fun!

How exactly did you do that? Cut out whole plot lines or just tighten up the language?

How I would go about it is lessen detail in certain areas, and perhaps remove lesser scenes. I've actually done that with mine, but I wasn't doing it because of length; I did it because it just made the story flow smoother and better.