Well, that makes me feel better …
Posted By Nonny on May 27, 2006
Agent Kristin Nelson posted about novel length trends the other day, sprurring an interesting discussion in the comments thread.
Some while ago, I heard — and for the life of me, I can’t remember who said it, but I’m pretty sure it was an industry professional or an author — that publishers were wanting shorter and shorter books, even in SF/F. I believe the stated “recommended” wordcount was between 80k – 100k, though the writer mentioned that shorter wasn’t out of bounds.
This concerned me, because I’m going to be adding a fair amount of material to Stronger than the Night, and I could easily see it hitting 120k.
So when I hit this comment from Jennifer Jackson, I was quite pleased. Consider she’s one of the major SFF agents out there … yeah. Not going to worry too much about the whole wordcount thing.
*major sigh of relief*
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I was kind of interested to see that Harlequin was decreasing the word count for some of it’s lines (Harlequin Intrigue 60-65K and Silhouette Intimate Moments 55-65K). I don’t know if it’s a trend or not, but it seems to be running sub guidelines.
Which is weird because I really like my romances (and SF and mysteries) to be 100K or more. *Sigh*. Seems I am not in the majority. Again.