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| Two recently-purchased "fat" fantasy novels, with Leo for perspective |
Most writers have word count on the brain. Conventional
wisdom has it that a typical novel is around 80,000-90,000 words long, but
that's a lot shorter than most of the fantasy novels I've read in recent years,
particularly traditional fantasy set in secondary worlds or any fantasy with an
epic flavor.
First-time authors are usually cautioned that excessive word
counts are off-putting to agents or potential editors.
This
source is commonly regarded as word count Bible for people trying to sell
their first novel in the US.
Even writers of traditional or epic fantasy are advised to keep their word
counts below 120,000 words, and the closer to 100,000 the better.
This makes sense, because it's expensive to edit, print, bind and distribute a longer book, and those fat fantasy books that fans love take up a lot of room in warehouses and on bookstore shelves. I always suspected publishers of fantasy had a bit of a catch 22 situation going on, actually. Fans of secondary world fantasy want to get lost in long tales and explore exotic worlds with the characters. But they don't want to pay 2-3x the price that one pays for a more typical-length book. So agents and editors have to weigh the pros and cons of a lengthy manuscript from a complete unknown very carefully indeed. It's rare indeed to see a fantasy novel that has fewer than three hundred and some odd pages, and longer page counts are very common. But page counts don't correspond tightly to word counts. A 120,000 word manuscript could have anywhere from 300-480 pages, depending on the line spacing, margins, font size and so on.
Another piece of advice given to first-time fantasy
authors is to write a stand-alone book. An editor doesn't want to commit to
more than one, I've been told, because if it doesn't sell well, they don't want
to be roped into publishing more duds. Again, this makes sense, but it seems a
bit unfair, given that very, very few writers produce a bestseller their first
time out. It can take a while to attract the attention of fans and build a
readership, and it's often hard to predict when and whether a debut will hit
the market's sweet spot.
This places an aspiring novelist in a difficult position if she
wants to write the kinds of fat fantasy series she likes to read. Should we
skimp on world building, limit the number of characters, and reduce our plot to
a bare-bones minimum in order to make it fit? Should we avoid traditional adult
fantasy completely until we've sold something shorter, maybe geared to a YA or
MG market even?
This got me to thinking. It's certainly not impossible to
sell a debut that's considerably longer than 100,000 words.
Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself was close to 200,000
words, and it is the start of a series. But he's a British writer, and it's said that the British markets run to longer books. But what
about
Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the
Wind? He's an American, and his book is close to 250,000 words. That puts
it in the territory
of George RR Martin, Robert Jordan, and
other established writers. But on a more sobering note, he won the Writers of
the Future contest with a short story based on an excerpt from the novel. Most
of us aren't going to accomplish this.
In any case, bestselling debuts are exceptional.
An agent or editor would make allowances for
a debut they think has a better than average chance of becoming a bestseller. The
question I have is whether or not long debuts ala Abercrombie, Rothfuss, Lynch
and Weeks are the norm over the past decade or so, even among writers who have
more ordinary sales.
So I decided to do a little poking around to see whether or
not most fantasy debuts are really as short as people say they need to be to
attract the attention of agents or editors. As it turns out, this is a
difficult task. Word counts seem to be jealously guarded. There are some
writer's forums that have provided them for some famous and bestselling works,
but it's much harder to find them for mid-list fantasy titles. There is
allegedly a feature on Amazon's website that allows you to access text data for
some titles, but they don't seem to have
it for any of the books I was investigating.
A few people helpfully suggested sites like these:
But they're primarily concerned with children's books or
with well-known or classic titles, and they didn't have data for most of the
traditional adult fantasy titles that have been published over the past twenty
years. Some authors mentioned word counts on their blogs or in interviews, but
more often than not, googling word count for given titles came up blank.
So I was forced to estimate word count with many of the
titles I listed. And it's been a painstaking process. This is not by any means
a representative or exhaustive list. And these are all books I've heard of or have
had recommended to me based on other books I've read. So there's little chance
this list represents a random slice of traditional fantasy either.
My criteria for inclusion were:
1. Written for and marketed to a primarily adult readership
(because YA and MG fantasy tend to be somewhat shorter)
2. Traditional fantasy set in a secondary world or an alternative world with a fairly epic scope. These are the subgenres that are most inclined
towards longer word counts. So no UF or contemporary fantasy.
3. published during the past 20 years (to see if there are
any trends)
4. A debut novel, or at least, a debut epic/traditional
fantasy novel written under a given name.
5. initial publication in an English-speaking country (not
to disregard work in other languages, but these are the markets most of my
fellow epic fantasy fans are likely to be interested in)
6. initially trade published. Agent or editor word count
restrictions obviously don't affect self-published titles, even if they are
later sold to a trade publisher.
Page counts are for the hardcover edition when available, or
for the trade PB. Mass market paperback editions tend to have longer page
counts and are given in parentheses when that was the only version available.
As you can see, the correlation between page count and word
count is loose at best, so any formulae used to calculate word count based on
the number of pages (like the gloriously inaccurate 250 words per page guideline,
which is for standard manuscripts, not
for published novels) are bound to be inaccurate.
So here's what I've come up with so far:
Australian Writers
Trudi Canavan: The Magician's Guild. (2001). 120,000 words. 384
pp. First of a series.
Glenda Larke: Havenstar
(1998) 163,000 words. 440 pp. Stand alone.
Canadian Writers
R Scott Bakker: The
Darkness that Comes Before: (2004) 175,000 words. 604 pp. First of a
series.
Jones and Bennett: Havemercy.
(2008) 121,000^ 400 pages. First of a series (Jones is American, Bennett is
Canadian)
UK writers
Joe Abercrombie: The
blade itself. (2007) 531 pp 192,000 words. First of a series.
Peter Brett: The
Painted/Warded Man. (2008): 541 pp 158,000 words. First of a trilogy.
Paul Hoffman: The Left Hand of God*. (2011): 115,000 words^. 372 pp. First of a series.
Francis Knight: Fade
to Black (2013): 98,000 words 384
pp. First of a trilogy.
Jane Welch: The Runes
of War. (1995): (? words) 494 pages. First of a trilogy.
US writers
Patricia Bray: Devlin's
Luck*. (2002) ? words 434 pp mm
paperback First of a trilogy.
Kristen Britain: Green
Rider. (1998) 150,000 words^ 450 pp. First of a series.
Dawn Cook: First Truth. (2002). 114,000^ 336 pp.
Betsy Dornbusch: Exile.
(2013) 109,000 words. 274 pages.
Amanda Downum: The
Drowning City (2009) 91,466 pp. 384 pp (mm pb). First of a trilogy.
Lynn Flewelling: Luck
in the Shadows. (1996) 156,000 words 479pp (mm pb). First of a series.
Eve Forward: Villains
by Necessity. (1995) 446 pp. Stand
alone.
Robin Hobb: Assassin's
apprentice* (1995) 164,088 words 400 pp. First of a series.
NK Jemisin: The
Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. (2010) 111,000 words^ 425 pages. First of a
trilogy.
Mark Lawrence: The Prince
of Thorns (2011). 90,000 words^. 336 pp. First of a trilogy.
Jane Lindskold. Through Wolf's
Eyes (2001). 192,082 words. 590 pp. First of a series.
Scott Lynch: The Lies
of Locke Lamora (2007) 190,000 449 pp. First of a series.
Patrick Rothfuss: The
Name of the Wind (2007) 662 pages 259,000 words. First of a trilogy.
Brandon Sanderson: Elantris
(2005) 199,000 words. 496 pages. Stand alone.
Ken Scholes: Lamentation
(2009) 130,000 words^. 366 page. First of a series.
Brent Weeks: The Way
of Shadows (2008) 156,000 words. 668 pp (mm pb). First of a trilogy.
So some trends here, for what they're worth:
1. Only three were stand alone. This suggests that
publishers are not adverse to picking up books that lead to sequels. Of course,
a satisfying ending is probably a better idea than a cliff hanger, even if
there's clearly more to come.
2. The average word count for the titles here (where I had
estimated word counts at least) was: 147,892
This is considerably longer than the recommended cutoff of
120,000. But again, I have no idea how representative my titles are for debut
secondary world/epic fantasy published over the past 20 years.
One interesting feature is that the word counts for debuts
published during the past five years are lower than the ones published
previously. But my data set is way too small for me to determine whether or not
this represents a significant trend.
So this obsessive enumeration really raises more questions
than it answers. If anyone has different/more accurate word count numbers for
any of these titles than I do, please let me know. Also, if you have any more
debut epic/traditional fantasy titles published in the past twenty years with
relevant data, please let me know.
I think the take home message here is to write as tightly as
you can without compromising the story you need to tell. A longer manuscript is
not impossible to sell, but whether or not fat books are as tough a sell as
everyone says for first-time fantasy writers, unnecessary verbiage is not going
to help anyone's cause.
* Not a true debut, as this author published previously in
another genre/subgenre or under another name
Other word counts obtained from personal communications,
author web sites, or the following forums or links:
