Get a Literary Agent: The Complete Guide to Securing Representation for Your Work (4 page)

How do you make sure this doesn’t happen? Be a ruthless self-editor. Self-editing is a large topic, and I could spend many pages discussing it. That said, here are three simple things you can do when self-editing.

1. BUY BOOKS ON SELF-EDITING, SUCH AS JAMES SCOTT BELL’S
   REVISION AND SELF-EDITING FOR PUBLICATION.
   You can also find plenty of print guides and blog articles that will teach you basic techniques, such as eliminating excess narrative, nixing passive voice, and making sure your book starts with an interesting scene.
   
2. ALWAYS BE LOOKING TO CUT.
   It’s much more common for a manuscript or sample chapter to have too much text than not enough. If you approach every chapter with a scalpel to trim off unnecessary words here and there, your writing will only tighten.
   
3. DON’T RUSH THE PROCESS, AND PLAN ON TAKING BREAKS TO STEP AWAY.
   Nothing will bring your mistakes more into focus than stepping away from the project for a time and then coming back to it. This will drastically increase your objective viewpoint.
   

When I travel to writers conferences, someone inevitably asks a simple, innocent question about word count—and a firestorm follows. “Standard” word count rules do exist in the publishing industry. Of course, there are always exceptions to these rules, and man, do people love pointing out the exceptions. “What about so-and-so’s debut novel?” they ask. “It’s sold over five million copies, and it’s 175,000 words long!”

But it’s important to remember that you cannot count on being the exception; you must count on being the rule. Aiming to be the exception is setting yourself up for disappointment. What some writers fail to see is that for every successful exception to the rule (e.g., a first-time 175,000-word bestseller), there are hundreds of failures. Almost always, a high word count indicates that the writer simply did not edit his work enough. Or it means he has actually written two or more books combined into one.

“But what about J.K. Rowling?” asks a man in the back of the room, putting his palms up in the air. Well—remember the first Harry Potter book? It wasn’t that long. After Rowling made the publishing house oodles and oodles of money, she could do whatever she wanted. But because most writers haven’t yet earned oodles, they need to stick to the rules and make sure their work gets read.

In addition to selling oodles, the other thing that can make you an exception is absolutely brilliant writing. But let’s face it: Most of our work doesn’t qualify as “absolutely brilliant”—and that’s okay.

With these thoughts in mind, let’s break down some general word count guidelines.

• ADULT NOVELS: COMMERCIAL AND LITERARY.
  Aim for between 80,000 and 89,999 words. This is a 100 percent safe range for the literary, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller, and horror genres. Now, speaking broadly, you can get away with as few as 71,000 words and as many as 109,000 words. But when a book dips below 80,000, it might be perceived as too short—it’s not giving the reader enough. This range can also be applied to narrative nonfiction (also called creative nonfiction).
  

  The one exception to this rule is the “chick lit” genre, which favors shorter, faster reads. If you’re writing chick lit, 65,000 to 75,000 is a better target range. And while it might be permissible to go over 100,000 words, if your book really warrants such length, don’t cross the six-figure mark by much. Agent Rachelle Gardner of Books and Such Literary points out that more than 110,000 words is defined as “epic or saga”—and chances are your cozy mystery or literary novel is not an epic. Gardner also mentions that passing the 100,000-word mark means you’ve written a book that will be more costly to produce—possibly making it a difficult sell.
  

• SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY.
  Science fiction and fantasy books tend to run long, largely because of all the descriptions and world building involved. The thing is, writers tend to know that these categories run long, so they make their manuscripts run
  really
  long and hurt their chances with an agent. With these genres, 100,000 to 110,000 words is an excellent range. It’s six figures, but it’s not excessive. There’s also nothing wrong with keeping it a bit shorter; it shows that you can whittle your work down. In broader terms, anything between 85,000 and 125,000 words may be acceptable.
  
• MIDDLE-GRADE (MG) NOVELS.
  Middle-grade fiction—that is, novels for readers in the nine-to-twelve-year-old age range—usually falls within 20,000 to 55,000 words, depending on the subject matter and target reader age. When writing a longer book aimed at twelve-year-olds (who are considered tweens), using the term “upper middle-grade” is advisable. These are books that resemble young adult fiction in matter and storytelling but tend to stick to middle-grade themes and avoid hot-button, YA-acceptable themes such as sex and drugs. With upper middle-grade, aim for 35,000 to 55,000 words. You can stray a little over but not much.
  

  With a simpler middle-grade idea (
  Football Hero
  or
  Jenny Jones and the Cupcake Mystery
  ), aim lower. Shoot for 20,000 to 30,000 words.
  

• YOUNG ADULT (YA) NOVELS.
  Perhaps more than any other, YA is the one category where word count is very flexible. For starters, 55,000 to 75,000 words is a great range. The word from the agent blogosphere is that YA books are currently trending longer and can top out at 90,000 words. However, this progression is still in motion, and trends can be fickle, so you may be playing with fire the higher you go. Make sure you have a compelling reason to submit a longer story. One good reason is that your YA novel is science fiction or fantasy. Once again, these categories are expected to be a little longer because of the description and world building they entail.
  

  On the low end, fewer than 50,000 words could be acceptable, but be sure to stay above 40,000 to remain viable in this genre.
  

• PICTURE BOOKS FOR CHILDREN.
  The standard word count for this category is sufficient text for twenty-eight pages, which might mean one line per page or slightly more. Aim for 500 to 600 words; if your manuscript is more than 1,000, editors and agents might shy away.
  
• WESTERN.
  Marketable manuscripts in this genre can be anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000 words. A good target range is anywhere around the 65,000-word mark.
  
• MEMOIR.
  This breed of nonfiction is queried—and evaluated by agents and editors—in much the same way a novel is, because the form relies so heavily on the writer’s voice, style, approach, and story arc. Memoir is the one nonfiction category where writers usually must complete the entire manuscript prior to submitting rather than compose only a few sample chapters as part of a book proposal.
  

  For memoir, aim for 80,000 to 89,999 words. This is one genre where writers often have a tendency to go unnecessarily long—possibly indicating to an agent that they’re too close to their own story to properly revise their work. With that in mind, a lower word count (70,000 to 79,999) is not a terrible thing. If you must go longer than the suggested range, don’t exceed 99,999.
  

• NONFICTION.
  Outside of “novel-like” books such as memoir and narrative nonfiction that fall into the same 70,000 to 100,000 frame work, the nonfiction categories do not abide by word count guidelines. That’s because the word count completely depends on the type of book you’re writing. A book full of humorous dog photos, for instance, may have 1,000 words of text or fewer. A true-crime book may run 60,000 words or 100,000, depending on the subject matter. A niche book about the history of Cuban art in Miami could be any length depending on how much narrative and text accompanied the art.
  

  When you pitch nonfiction, you do so with a book proposal in which you’ll have to estimate the completed word count. To do this, you must envision what the final product will be like and, if necessary, use other published books as reference points.
  

Some literary agents, such as Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary Agency, say that you shouldn’t think about word count but rather about telling the best story possible at the right pace. While she’s technically correct, not every agent feels that way. Many aren’t willing to give a 129,000-word debut novel a shot. Agents receive so many queries and submissions that they often look for reasons to say no. And if you submit a project well outside the typical length conventions, then you are giving them ammunition to reject you.

Some writers may just take their chances, cross their fingers, and hope for the best. But I believe that you cannot count on being the exception; you must count on being the rule. That’s the way to give yourself the best shot at success.

Once your book is finished, it’s time to start submitting to agents. Start by creating a new Microsoft Word or Excel document so you can keep detailed track of your submissions, target agents, resource materials, and more. This document will help you personalize query letters, find more agents to contact, and know when to follow up on submissions.

Now it’s time to create your list of potential agents to query. As you start compiling agent names and contact info, think in terms of casting a wide net. Scour databases and websites (we’ll explore these later in the chapter) to put together the largest possible collection of reps to contact; then start narrowing it down. Understand right off the bat that not every agent is for you. You’ll be targeting only a fraction of the active reps out there—seeking those who represent the specific type of book you’re writing.

Before you go looking for agents to contact, you must define what you’ve written. In other words, when push comes to shove, you have to classify it as
something
. So what type of book is it? (Note that fiction is broken down into
genres
, while nonfiction is broken down into
categories
. If you’re confused about genre and category definitions, see the Glossary of Genres and Category Definitions in the Appendix.)

Some writers will have no difficulty with this step—immediately telling their friends that they’ve written a romance or a thriller or an illustrated picture book. But other writers will not be so sure. They’ll question the exact classification of their work and therefore won’t know which agents to target. Let’s run through some examples of category dilemmas.

1. YOU’VE WRITTEN A LEGAL THRILLER AND CAN’T FIND MANY AGENTS WHO REPRESENT THIS TYPE OF BOOK.
   Your mistake is that you’re specifically looking for agents seeking “legal thrillers” when you should just be looking for agents seeking “thrillers.” A popular fiction genre—such as thriller—has many subcategories, including techno-thrillers, medical thrillers, legal thrillers, climate fiction thrillers (“cli-fi”), and more. But most agents won’t get into the nitty-gritty when explaining what categories they want. They’ll just say, “I seek thrillers.” And anyone who says that is a potential market for your thriller. Some will personally lean toward your subgenre of thriller, while others won’t. You won’t know exactly which subcategories they prefer, so just query all available markets and hope for the best. Also, it’s likely that a few agents out there will mention their admiration for “legal thrillers” in their personal information. If you see an agent put out a call for the exact type of book you’re writing, that’s a great potential match for you. When querying, you can say, “Because I’ve read that you are actively seeking [x], I thought you might enjoy my novel, [
   Title
   ].”
   
2. YOU’VE WRITTEN A SCIENCE FICTION YOUNG ADULT BOOK AND DON’T KNOW WHETHER TO CONTACT YOUNG ADULT AGENTS OR SCIENCE FICTION AGENTS.
   The answer is to query young adult agents. If it’s a book for kids, it’s a book for kids. It’s not like young adult romance should be treated like adult romance. If it’s fundamentally YA or MG you should query agents in those categories.
   
3. YOU’RE NOT SURE IF YOUR BOOK IS SUSPENSE OR THRILLER BECAUSE IT BLENDS THE TWO.
   You won’t find many agents who put out a call for “a crossbreed of thriller and suspense.” Instead you’ll get a lot of agents simply asking for “thriller” and some asking for “suspense.” Feel free to query all of them. In your contact letter to a specific agent, you can alternate between the classification terms, depending on what her needs are. Or you can just query them all, stating up front that your book is a “suspenseful thriller.”
   
4. YOU’RE WRITING IN A CATEGORY OF FICTION THAT SOME AGENTS MAY REP, BUT VIRTUALLY NONE REQUEST IT SPECIFICALLY IN THEIR GUIDELINES.
   If you’re dealing with a “lonely” genre of fiction, such as “humorous fiction” or “medieval fiction,” and can’t find many target reps for the book, you can always seek out
   generalists
   . Some agents will be very specific concerning what they want and don’t want. But plenty of reps will instead say something like “I’m open to any area of fiction that’s done well.” If an agent publicly says she has no restrictions concerning submissions, feel free to contact her and hope for the best. This problem of writing in an under-the-radar category is even more common with nonfiction; it can be difficult to find an agent specifically asking for “books about Wicca” or “books about exterminating unwanted pests from your home.” If you’re writing nonfiction like this, your strategy, again, should be to seek generalists or to bypass the agent and go straight to a publisher.
   
5. YOU’VE WRITTEN A NOVEL THAT DOESN’T FIT INTO ANY SO-CALLED GENRE.
   Some novels will be easy to categorize, such as fantasies, Westerns, and horror. But what about novels that do not fit into any of these popular commercial genres? Chances are, you’re going to categorize them as “literary fiction” or “mainstream fiction.” Literary novels do not fall into any popular genre type, focus on character more than plot, and value impressive voice, style, and technique. Mainstream fiction is a similar category, but the term is used to describe nongenre stories that have mass appeal and can transcend fans of literary fiction and appeal to members of book clubs.