My question is this: What is the average word count for a memoir? What is too much? What is the word count (approx) that literay agents and publishers want?This response is for all my readers, not just this questioner:
The editors I know spend a lot of time on Amazon, doing research. Don't you? Why not?
If you have been, then you might have noticed that some of the books (unfortunately not all of them, but enough to be useful) have a link you can click on about a third of the way down the page (under "Inside This Book") called "Text Stats".
Let's have a look at the Amazon page for Bad Boy: a Memoir, by Walter Dean Myers. Do you see the "text stats" link? Great. Click on it. It tells you how many words are in the book!
How about that. Now, to determine what your word count might reasonably be, you'd look up some of the books in the same genre, age range, and perhaps topic as your book's, and compare their word counts.
Sound easy? It is!
The hard part is knowing what the best comparisons for your book will be, and as much as I enjoy helping people, this part is your problem. Not because I can't be bothered, but because doing the research is a big, important learning experience for authors. Let me repeat: big and important.
Go learn something.
Oh, oh, what method do they use to count the words? And my wife says I'm ornery.
ReplyDeleteI love Amazon for all sorts of useful things; the text stats are a good one.
ReplyDeleteI searched their site for similar books to my last one, and spent an hour or two just reading the readers' reviews and comments. So many likes and dislikes came up over and over again; a few of the reviewers had interesting insights. I ordered a few reviewer's favourites to read for myself, then went back for another edit and caught things good and bad.
I wish more publishers would offer the 'Look Inside' feature: I still like reading a few pages before I buy a book.
Who knew (I suppose most people, I'm a bit slow)? Good info!
ReplyDeleteI was doing the old "average 250 words per page" guess job! That is so much simpler and more accurate.
Thank you for the info!
:) Terri
There's this stuff called word processing software that runs on this new-fangled device called a computer, which is much like a cross between a TV and typewriter, that can count words.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about memoir specifically, but some publishers gave average word counts of the genres they publish in CWIM--so you can get an idea of what they consider appropriate. Other than that, I heard an editor say during a workshop that she got nervous if she received a midgrade ms. that was more than 150 (ms.) pages.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a really quick tool at Renaissance Learning (the people who do the quizzes). It's a little faster than Amazon, if you're just looking for word count.
Amazon is usually wrong about the number of words in a book. My picture book of 57 words is listed as having over 150 words. bosh. -wendie)
ReplyDeleteI recently worked on a PB memoir(5-8yrs) with an editor. The very first thing she asked me to do was to chop it to under 1000 words, and I am certain she felt even that was being generous. But truthfully, young people (especially prereaders)just don't have the attention spans for more.
ReplyDeleteHere's another site where you can get word count, as well as other info. Not all books are in their database but it's pretty thorough.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.renlearn.com/store/quiz_home.asp#quicksearch
Link got cut off. Sorry.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.renlearn.com/store/quiz_home.asp#quicksearch
I like this answer more than others because it teaches us wanna be writers something rather than giving a cut and dry number to stay under. Thanks!
ReplyDelete(I've added this post as an embedded link in my blog - so maybe you'll get one or two more readers ;-)
Wendie O, Are you talking about Busy Fingers?
ReplyDeleteI'd suggest you let Amazon know there's that mistake.
Look for the bar at the bottom of the page labeled "Feedback" and click on "Is there any other feedback you would like to provide? Click here".
Wendie, I would guess they are including front matter and maybe flap copy. While that certainly makes a difference to a picture book, I don't think it would affect a full-length memoir.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the good information. I didn't know before because the German Amazon doesn't yet have that feature.
ReplyDeleteCat
Wow! What a fabulous tip! Thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteI'm off to take a look!
It can be difficult to do so, great post.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this. Very useful tool!
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Fantastic blog you have here. You’ll discover me looking at your stuff often. Saved! word counter tool
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