Don't Count Words; Make Words Count, Part Two

Word Counts of Successful Middle-Grade Novels by Rookie Authors

In my prior post, I looked at the word counts of fifty of the most popular middle-grade novels published between 2001 and 2014 and compared their lengths to guidelines that are given to would-be authors. In general, over 50% of the books were outside the length of the guidelines.

The former post only dealt with part of the issue of word counts, with most of the novels written by established authors. While this does provide a sense of what the audience is willing to read, for the author completing or else trying to sell his or her first middle-grade novel, the length of the sixth installment in the Harry Potter series is of little relevance. A more pressing matter is: what were the lengths of the debut novels of middle-grade authors?

I used very restrictive criteria to assemble a database to analyze this question.

• The book must have been published in the last twenty years.
• The novel was the first book published by the author. I strictly did not allow for authors who had previously published even though there are several prominent authors who began publishing middle-aged fiction immediately after a single young adult or adult fiction book (e.g., Lemony Snicket and Rick Riordan). These authors (probably) already had an agent.
• The book must have been successful. Success was defined in the previous post (New York Times Bestseller, recent Newbery winner, or most recognized in its genre at Goodreads, typically 100,000 or more ratings). Or:
• I did allow for authors who became successful from subsequent books, i.e., the first book was seen as the calling card for talent. In these cases, I traced a bestselling middle-grade author back to that author's first published book and added it to the list if it was a middle-grade book.
• The author did not enter with a big platform.

For this database, I was able to find 22 novels. These were:

In my previous post, I also identified three sets of guidelines that are commonly used to define the proper size of middle-grade novels.

• Writer's Digest: 20,000–55,000.
• Word Count Dracula. Realistic Middle Grade: 25,000-60,000 words. Fantasy Middle Grade: 35,000-75,000 words. 
• Literary Rejections: 25,000 to 40,000.

So, how many of these first-time efforts fit into the guidelines?

Writer's Digest: 45.5%
Word Count Dracula: 59.1%
Literary Rejections: 13.4%

If these guidelines were taken as law, all of them would have rejected Seesaw Girl, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Wonder, The Goose Girl, The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had, The School for Good and Evil, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, and Moon Over Manifest. Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn Dixie, Rump, and A Snicker of Magic, did not fit two out of three of the recommended guidelines.

Conclusions.

For the most part, word count guidelines don't represent what is being published. In the case of the restrictive guidelines from Literary Rejections, they only serve to provoke anxiety. Use common sense. It will be easier for you if work is near to conventional norms because unconventional works are harder to sell, but this is a less important element than having a great work to sell.

To phrase it in another way, as I said when I began this analysis, Don't Count Words: Make Words Count. I cannot say whether word count hindered the acceptance of the above set of books, but the talent they represented was ultimately recognized and they were published. Aim for that level of talent.

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of three mysteries for adults, each between 55 and 70K words: one published, one due out June 27th, and one to come out at the end of the year. He has a pair of unpublished middle grade novels which fall into accepted guidelines.

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Don't Count Words: Make Words Count

This post deals with the recommended length of middle-grade fiction. As I will attempt to show, for both well-established and first-time authors, the guidelines do not correspond to the length of successful books. Rather than approaching this issue through examples or anecdotes, I systematically assembled a database with the intent to include all of the most successful middle-grade fiction novels from the past 15 years.

Book Length Angst

The pursuit of the proper book length torments would-be authors, an anguish they convey to agents and publishers whom they see as the austere gatekeepers who guard the entrance to the promised land of page and ink. In order to herd the fledgling authors and to salve their troubled souls, internet magi offer word count guidelines.

Foremost, the guidelines are presented to provide a sense of what can and cannot sell. They are said to represent a facile, albeit imperfect, means by which eccentric submissions are winnowed out.

Nearly all of these advice-givers include these two bits of wisdom at the margins: Don't take the guidelines too literally and use common sense.

Don't get caught up in word count to stick to category norms. Then again, don't submit a manuscript that's 150,000 words either. But straying 10k in either direction is totally fine. From: http://www.dystel.com/category/middle-grade/

In spite of these caveats, the most restrictive of guidelines are presented as being authoritative, when all they do is provoke unnecessary anxiety.

Comparing Actual Word Counts to Guidelines

Where do the numbers in word count guidelines come from? Often, no sources are given. I suspect in some cases, the origin is an accumulated wisdom coming from poring over thousands of manuscripts. Other times, it seems to be repeating something someone else has declared as law. In a few instances the guideline author provides word counts from a list of books, drawing on classic and recent examples from a particular genre.

One of the ongoing themes of my website is the question of how long actual novels are and whether they fit into the common guidelines. I have addressed this question already regarding mystery novels and have found that, contrary to what the guidelines recommend, among bestsellers, the short mystery novel is alive and well. I am continuing this analysis to look at a subject close to my heart: middle-grade books. I set out to determine: How long is the modern middle-grade book?

Assembling a Set of Successful Middle-Grade Novels for Analysis (2001 to the Present).

Rather than looking at the length of all-time classics, I decided to focus on recent, successful middle-grade prose fiction. Limited to prose and fiction, I excluded the occasional guide (The Care and Keeping of You) and poetry books. I used three sources. Firstly, since December 2012, the New York Times has run a separate middle-grade bestseller list. I also sampled their Children's Series list for the middle-grade entries. To limit the number of books in my analysis, I selected the most successful: those with at least 25 weeks on one of the two lists.

As a second source, I included the middle grade Newbery winners from 2010 to 2015. While the Newbery Awards have received some notoriety for celebrating virtually unread books, this reputation hasn't been deserved as of late. In the last seven years the primary winners have included the runaway bestsellers: The One and Only Ivan; Flora and Ulysses; The Graveyard Book and When You Reach Me.

My final source was Goodreads. I pored over the fifty books most commonly "shelved" as middle grade fiction. I added to my analysis any of these published since 2000 which had not already been included in my list. These are popular books: even the 50th entry received over 100,000 ratings.

To prevent any one author (e.g., Riordan) from dominating the list and skewing the results, I limited the number of books per author to a maximum of three. For these three I chose the author's two most recent bestsellers and the debut book in the series. I divided the entries up into reality and fantasy. Most often this was an easy call. My reference list totaled a nice round 50 middle-grade novels published between 2001 and 2014 (median year: 2011). I used this database to answer the more general question: what are the lengths of the best-selling books*. A second database, discussed in my next post, will look at the question which is of greater interest to authors still seeking to get published: how long were the successful middle-grade books by recent first-time authors?

The Guidelines Examined.

I compared my database to three sets of guidelines for middle-grade book length.

To summarize the rules put forth by Chuck Sambuchino, Editor of Writers Digest:

"Middle grade is from 20,000–55,000, depending on the subject matter and age range... With upper middle grade, you can aim for 40,000–55,000 words. ... With a simpler middle grade idea (Football Hero, or Jenny Jones and the Cupcake Mystery) ... shoot for 20,000–35,000 words."

A popular entry in this field is from Jennifer Laughlin of Andrea Brown Literary Agency in her post, Word Count Dracula. I applaud her for offering up more generous guidelines and separating out realistic from fantasy.

"Realistic Middle Grade: 25,000-60,000 words. Sweet spot: 30,000-45,000 ...
Fantasy Middle Grade: 35,000-75,000 words. Sweet spot: 45,000-65,000"

The cruelest of corsets comes from the Literary Rejections website:

"Middle Grade: 25,000 to 40,000–Such a tight restraint can be beneficial to a writer because it allows them to demonstrate their ability to edit accordingly. For debut books in this field the average word count tends to be 35K and it has therefore become the marker many industry professionals look for in queries from new writers."

The Results

Since I am addressing the question of whether the guidelines fairly describe the length of middle-grade books, the average is unimportant. A 15,000 word book together with a 120,000 word book average out to be 67,500 words, but neither fall within the guidelines and both could well be considered hard-to-sell. The important metric is to examine how many books fall inside and outside of these guidelines.

Without taking into account extenuating factors (below), 23 out of 50 (46%) of the books were within the Writers' Digest guidelines. This figure increased to 24 (48%) for the Word Count Dracula guidelines even though this offered a broader range and took into account fantasy versus reality. Only 26% of the books fell within the restrictive Literary Rejections guidelines.

Percent of Successful Middle-Grade Novels That Fit the Lengths Offered by Popular Guidelines, 2001-2014.

 Guideline Source      % within guidelines
Literary Rejections          26%     
Writer's Digest              46%    
Word Count Dracula           48%   


One matter which the guidelines did not take into account were graphic heavy books such as those by Jeff Kinney which ring in at 19K words. (Although, equally graphic heavy books by Rachel Renee Russell and the I, Funny series fall within the recommended counts.) Another explanation for these anomalous book lengths comes from the issue of author platform.

Platforms Big and Long.

This first analysis is not directed at the works by newbie authors. Many of the authors on the list had already built an audience among middle-grade readers (a long platform) or else were famous going into the field (a big platform). An argument could be rightly made that these authors could come in with virtually any length manuscript and have it published.

For those not following popular middle grade books, they might be surprised to find the list of the bestselling authors includes John Grisham, James Patterson, Carl Hiaasen and Rush Limbaugh. Another bestseller entered the field with a big platform: the authors of the novelization of Disney's Frozen (Sarah Nathan and Sela Roman). To be fair, their runaway success was not solely due to the popularity of the movie: other Disney novelizations have not fared so well. A final member who entered the field with a big platform is Jeff Kinney, whose Wimpy Kid had an internet following in the millions before he published.

Another set of authors built their platforms based on prior success in the field, often through a series. J.K. Rowling and Rick Riordan have enormous followings. Both of these authors publish well above the range of word count guidelines.

In terms of the 50 books in my database, 17 were by authors with big platforms, 20 were by authors with long platforms, and 13 were by authors with little or no publishing history. The last group will be expanded and dealt with in my next post. The results are presented in the tables below.

                        Platform Size
Guideline Source      big (n=17)  long (n=20)
Literary Rejections      17.6%        30%
Writer's Digest          52.9%        45%
Word Count Dracula       52.9%        50%


One too-facile argument used by those defending the word count guidelines is "don't be blinded by the exceptions." J.K. Rowling, with her fan-base, could write whatever length book she wanted. But it is not just Rowling who has written middle-grade books that run over 100,000 words. So has Cornelia Funke, Rick Riordan, Soman Chainani and Trenton Lee Stewart (among others). Chainani was a first time author and Stewart had one prior, adult novel. The others were established authors, but their detailed world-building helped establish them. Perhaps it is time to rethink what length the middle-grade audience is willing to read.

Conclusions

When I started this analysis, I suspected that the large majority of middle-grade novels would fall into the guidelines and that Rowling would define the outliers. This was not the case. I approached this analysis thinking that word count anxiety was a silly concern of uninformed writers who are waiting to publish their first works. After running into the restrictive Literary Rejections advice, I've come to the conclusion that cruel and unrealistic restrictions are being recommended by some. 

The bottom line of common sense still applies. Write that great novel at the length it needs to be. Make it irresistible because, regardless of word count, you will encounter resistance in getting it published. Don't flout conventions, but don't let them hamstring you.

*To determine word counts for these analyses, I referenced Renaissance.com which maintains a massive database for most all popular children's books. Word count has a good degree of concurrence with unabridged audio book length and a poor correlation to page count. [Note: as of June 1, 2015 access to the Renaissance service has been discontinued.]

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King of the Golden Hill: An Analysis of 50 Years of Bestsellers.

So You Want Your Novel To Be a Bestseller? 

I looked at fifty years of the books that dominated the New York Times Adult Fiction Bestseller List, starting in 1960 and continuing through 2009. My goal was to see what kind of book got on top and stayed there, and how this has changed over time.

To narrow down the massive number of titles, I focused on those which stayed on top for at least four weeks. By limiting my analyses to novels, I tossed out a handful of short story or novella collections, the graphic book, Return of the Jedi, and works under 20,000 words including Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1972) and The Christmas Box (1995). This left me with 197 novels to look at.

A Little Background.

The New York Times first began determining best-selling novels and non-fiction works on a national basis in 1942. Over the years, these lists have splintered to include competing lists. Among the categories they were divided into were paperbacks versus hardcover, print versus e-book, and children's versus adult. Sublists have been added to distinguish trade from mass-market.

For these analyses, I examined the Adult Fiction Bestsellers. The methods used are described at the end of this post.

A Brief Overview of Fifty Years of Bestsellers: Length of Stay on Top.

During the year 1960, only two novels held the number one spot: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury, carrying over from 1959 and Hawaii by James Michener which stayed on top for 49 weeks, spilling into 1961. They slugged it out, the top entry spot changing eleven times. Long stays on top of the list were common for the 1960s. Over the course of the decade, 31 novels took the number one spot for an average stay of 16.1 weeks. Novels which were at least four weeks at the number one position filled 98.4% of the weeks. [490 of 498 weeks. Weeks with strikes (14) and those with a novella compilation (10) were excluded from the total.]

During the year 2009, 37 different novels occupied the number one position, 31 of these for only one week. The average stay was 1.4 weeks. Over a remarkable period, one-week wonders climbed to the top spot for each of twenty consecutive weeks. Novels with four or more weeks at the number one position filled 47.7% of the weeks during the decade of the 2000s. If you exclude The Da Vinci Code, the Gangnam Style of novels, this number drops to 36.4%.

What happened in between was a great splintering in the length of stay on the list. The value of being number one was quantified and incentives were written into book contracts for its achievement. The number one bestselling authors could demand higher speaker fees. The competition for the number one spot became fierce. The company ResultSource guarantees a number one position for a fee of $200,000. Their webpage has a disturbing minimalism. (This may be thought of as being the steroid period of American popular literature.)

This quick turnover has continued. The reason I did not extend this analysis into the 2010s is that so few books stayed on top for at least four weeks: so far only ten books have met this criteria.

Novel Length

Advise and Consent and Hawaii came from a day when books were judged by their ability to blockade the cave's entrance to keep out saber-toothed tigers. Drury weighed in at 616 pages and 270,000 words, Michener at 937 pages and 460,000 words. During the 1960s the average novel* ran 463 pages and 172833 words. In the 1980s this ballooned to 554 pages and 208987 words. Of the 54 novels included in this analysis during the 1980s none were under 80,000 words.

During the 2000s, the length of the average novel had dropped to half as many words: 103,880. Of the 36 novels included in this analysis for this decade, 12 had fewer than 80,000 words.

*I use the term novel as shorthand to describe those included my analysis: those on top of the New York Times Adult Fiction Bestseller list for at least four weeks.

Continued with Some Motley Observations. 
 
Analysis Continued.

Methods and Resources

The New York Times Adult Bestseller Lists are available from the New York Times website and Wikipedia.

When a book was a bestseller before and after the turn of the decade, I placed it with the decade of its printing. If it was on the list for at least four weeks in both decades I counted its presence as being in both decades.

 Actual word counts were available at Renaissance.com for 107 of the 196. Word counts were estimated from listening length as described below for an additional 81 of the books. This left 8 books with insufficient information to estimate word counts and these were left out of the word count analyses.

Page counts: Worldcat.org was my first choice for page counts. Earliest editions were sought.

Listening length. This included only unabridged, non-dramatized recordings. Most commonly these were found via Worldcat.org. On several occasions I searched through Audible.com.

A database was assembled for this and a previous study which contains the listening length and actual word counts for 182 novels. These averaged 150.3 words per minute ±15.7 SDEV. The former figure was used to calculate word counts in instances where audio files were available.

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Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.
 
A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook editions through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

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Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game,  features Nikola Tesla as detective.

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The Combined CWA/MWA List with Word Counts.

As described in other posts, this is the Crime Writers' Association of Britain (1990) and the Mystery Writers of America's (1995) combined list of the top mystery novels. Presented for reference. Ordered by word count. For the final entries, the word count is unknown.

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