How Long is Too Long?

At Tate Publishing we have a standard maximum word count of 115,000 words, and usually encourage authors to fly well under that figure. I'm often asked why a particular author's book can't exceed this unfair, arbitrary, impossible ceiling, and here's what I say:


1. It's too long for your reader. An average reader knocks back 25 pages/hour of a typical storytelling book (fiction, memoir, biography, creative non). For your 120k-word book, you're looking 500 pages in the eye. So you're asking Mrs. Reader, who has job, family, and community responsibilities, to spend 20 hours with your story. When's the last time you spent 20 hours doing anything that didn't pay at least $7.25 per?


2. It's too expensive. There are myriad factors that go into determining a book's retail price, but we'll use some round numbers for our purposes. Let's say for a 50,000-word (200-page) book a reader is shelling out $15, a few bucks more than a music album, and way more than DVD or video game rental, game night with the family, facebook binge, four hours of youtube, etc., etc. When we jump to 500 pages, you're asking that a reader spend $30 on your product--more than everything mentioned above, a tank of gas, three buckets of KFC extra crispy, and an hotel stay in Las Vegas. This is simply too expensive to compete with modern entertainment options. We would be pricing your book out of the market.


3. You can tell your story more efficiently, and more effectively. A Tate Publishing author is given professional advice from our skilled Conceptual Editors on ways to tell his or her story more concisely. It's not unheard of for an editor to recommend--and work with her author--to trim 30,000 words off of a book. (Cringe, right?) When you're close to your book, as most authors are, every word is precious. Your Editor represent a reader, a market, and offers objective advice and encouragement on which elements of your story readers will enjoy (we also recommend elaboration!), and which sections would be best to minimize or omit. The best part of this process is that it negates reader obstacles 1 and 2 above. The story is told more efficiently, with fewer places for the reader to get distracted ("The TV remote is right there on the end table!"), bored ("I could be on the Internet in two clicks watching a cat play the piano!"), or discouraged by the amount of pages yet to read. 


This said, when I finally shut my yapper after this spiel and an author asks how he can grease the skids and squeeze his corpulent, 150k-word Victorian novel through my editing department and out into the market, I tell him I'm a sucker for brownies. But nothing elaborate. I don't want to get distracted by cheesecake swirls or gummy-bear centers. I want simple, chewy, chocolate goodness.


Also see: If you have the opposite problem, check out this post on how to increase your novel's word count.