Word count has always been something that stresses me out. As a reader I tend to become bored with novels that drag stuff out and are overly descriptive. Therefore as a writer, I tend to shy away from excessive description in my own novels. This is where word count comes into play. Sometimes when I’m reading a novel I feel like the author could have cut about twenty thousand words and the book would have been SO much better. Other times I think the description is to a minimum and fine. This is just my personal opinion. Both as a reader and as a writer I try extremely hard not to focus on the word count, but more so on the story itself. That does not mean, however, that when I’m writing I’m not sweating bullets when I get to the end and notice a low word count.
What exactly is the word count for young adult novels?
Well, according to Wikipedia here is the answer:
A NOVEL is anything over 40,000 words.
A NOVELLA is between 17,500 and 40,000 words.
A NOVELETTE is between 7,500 and 17,500.
A SHORT STORY is anything under 7,500 words.
I am almost positive I have blogged about this before, but honestly I’m too lazy to look it up at the moment. What brings about this rehashing of word count you might be asking yourself? The amount of negativity in reviews I have received for my novel lengths over the course of my Indie author career. It’s something that I have tried to avoid speaking out on, but when it is something that is repeatedly brought to your attention it can be sort of frustrating. I am by no means calling any reviewer out and would like to make that point VERY clear. Crystal, in fact! I have and always will be incredibly thankful for any review that any of my novels receive.
As based on the word counts mentioned above four of my novels are in fact novels. Shattered Soul has a word count of around 47,000. Marked is 51,000. Changed is about 50,500 words. And The Unloved is slightly longer with 54,000 words. Touch is my only novella and is 18,115 words. Choice is my only short story which is 2,500 words.
Each of my e-book editions have the word count in the description of the book. I did this a while back to give readers a sense of the length of the work. Even in doing this I still see the length mentioned in reviews more often than not in a negative way. My question is: Do readers understand what the word count of a work actually means? Again, let me make myself clear, I’m not dogging any of the reviewers who have written reviews for any of my books in any way, nor am I attempting to imply anything negative to their intelligence. I’m simply wondering what is the best way to convey the length of a work to readers when it comes to e-books especially. Is it by noting the word count or would approximate page count be more sufficient? Any opinions from readers or authors would be greatly appreciated.
You bring up a really good question. I find that word count matters less than content. I’ve read lots of shorter books that are so jammed packed with awesome scenes that they are amazing and longer books that bore me with the filler. I think listing the word count is a good idea since so much is about expectations. My issue with page count is that it varies so much. I’ve seen books with the same page count that have completely different word counts depending on formating and book size.