Less words during re-write

Yep...going through the same thing. I haven't had the time to figure out how to begin posting again...
Good luck with your many mini-plots...just weave them through like a tapestry, for it is your tapestry you are weaving...

Thanks for the support, I wish you the very best of luck too. :)

I'm definitely worried about that happening to me. When I think of editing my work, I think of taking out all the crappy scenes, and there are little to no scenes I want to add in.

My advice is to edit novels that don't have many scenes that need to be cut out. OR to aim much higher in word count, so that after you take out a ton of it, you will still have a decent sized book left.

:)

I'd like to give some professional advice, if I may. First, so that you will know I am not talking out of my hat, I am the Senior Editor for Written Pictures Publishing, Inc.

When editing your drafts, do not remove anything. Simply check for verb tense agreement, grammar, spelling, comma placement and other punctuation issues. If you discover any plot holes, note them and brainstorm solutions for them. DO NOT REMOVE SCENES UNLESS AND UNTIL REQUESTED BY YOUR EDITOR. The impulse to remove scenes comes from allowing your inner critic to take over. Ignore the dirty S.O. B.

Industry standard for a full-fledged novel is 150,000 words, due to printers charging publishers for that word count regardless what actual count is submitted. Publishers must then eat that cost, which ultimately eats into your royalties.

The second reason you do not remove scenes is that most publishers promote your book using every means necessary. One of the best ways to promote a book, from the publisher's point of view, is to take the book to movie. That way, publicity from the film pushes book sales, meaning less marketing expense. Books go to movie when they have one or more powerful scenes per chapter. If you have taken the time to write secneically, using what advances the plot rather than what enhances the extended description, the book WILL be sought by someone for its movie rights. This is A VERY GOOD THING for the author as well as for the publishing company.

Good luck with your efforts!
Sincerely,

Jane M. Smith, Senior Editor
Written Pictures Publishing, Inc.
jsmithwrittenpictures@gmail.com
submissionswp@gmail.com

Thank you for your input, I really appreciate it. However, I must admit that my story was really really bad before I started editing it, and it sounds a lot better now. I'm currently working on another scene which should give me more words, but I know I won't be able to turn it into a 150,000 word novel. It's just what it is, and for now, that goal is beyond what I can reach. ;) Perhaps later though.

"Industry standard for a full-fledged novel is 150,000 words, due to printers charging publishers for that word count regardless what actual count is submitted. Publishers must then eat that cost, which ultimately eats into your royalties."

I didn't know that before. I know some people can produce 150,000 words and beyond, but do most really write that much? Dedication...and a good plot. I'd love to one day have my book turned into a movie, so I might want to consider adding more crucial parts, and possibly a couple more chapters. You gave me a fair amount to think about, so as I said before, thank you for your help. :)

Chloe

I've always heard that the industry standard for word counts was more like 70k - 100k. What genre do you work with mostly?

In no way is 150,000 words the "industry standard" for novel length. 150,000 words comes out to over 600 pages. Note how many novels you see on the shelf that reach that length. Not too many. And especially not too many from first-time authors. Each genre has its own parameters for word count. Of course there are novels in each genre that go outside those parameters in both directions, but those very long or very short novels are the exception rather the norm, and, once again, they're generally written by established authors rather than first-timers.

Here's a recent blog post by FinePrint Literary agent Colleen Lindsay about approximate word counts by genre:
http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.ht...

What she's written there follows what I've been hearing for years from conferences, professional organizations, other authors, agents and editors, etc.

Industry standard for a full-fledged novel is 150,000 words, due to printers charging publishers for that word count regardless what actual count is submitted. Publishers must then eat that cost, which ultimately eats into your royalties.

I worked in production / design for one of the big publishing houses and I never heard of book printing economics working this way. If a publisher's having 100,000 copies of a 60,000-word novel printed, they're going to pay for the ink and paper (and labor and cutting and binding and so forth) for what is approximately a 230-page book. (The only quirk I ran up against was making sure the InDesign file I sent to the printer had a page count that was a multiple of 8. This had to do with the number of pages that could fit on one sheet of printer paper.) Why on earth would they be charged for the cost of a 600-plus-page book?

What happens with those 600-plus-page books is that the publisher must pay more (than a shorter book) to have them printed, but they can't up the cover price of those books at the same rate. Even if the printing of a 600-page book costs nearly twice what it does for a 300-page book, the publisher can't charge the consumer twice as much. So the thicker books become a bigger financial risk for the publisher. They have to sell more of 'em to recoup the cost. But the odds aren't so good at selling more of them, because the bookstores may be hesitant to buy many copies. 3 600-page books take up as much shelf space as 6 300-page books. So, unless the bookstore has a hunch that this particular fat novel will have a lot of fans (say, it's a George R.R. Martin book), they may buy and stock fewer copies than they would have had it been a shorter book.

And I don't have anything against long books. I've got quite a few of them on my bookshelves. It's just that, if you want to write one, and sell it to one of the big houses, you may want to wait until you've established yourself with a few other books first. I've read some agents guidelines where they specifically say they *won't* take any submissions over 100K or 120K.

So definitely don't feel any pressure to stuff your novel full of scenes until it hits 150K.

Thank you Satori, that makes me feel a lot better. :D And thanks for explaining that, it puts it into a better perspective for me about publishing the books, and the costs it takes.

Funny, because my word count is expanding. I've edited about 20-22k of my rough draft, and my edited draft is almost 28k.

^_^ You're lucky then. I think it's just because I took out a lot of the crap that it was - I would NEVER send it to a publisher, regardless if people say to just look for spelling/grammar. It was...it was horrible.