Quillwitch
Basic
I recently came across a conversation on twitter started by a literary agent who specializes in children´s and Ya books and she mentions, through several tweets, that she is worried that people ( readers, and therefore booksellers, librarians, and hence publishers) are asking ...begging for shorter books. Apparently, the young reader´s attention span has shortened again post- pottermania.
The agent´s name is Molly Ker Hawn, if any of you care to follow her tweet. I´m posting here some of the observations made for your consideration. This worries me very much since I´m not very good at getting to the point, cutting to the chase, killing my darlings etc... and my work tends to be rather long. Any thoughts fellow MG and YA writers? @Agente Pete?
The thread begins here:
"I'm reading queries and seeing a trend that's dismaying me: so many very long books. I ask every bookseller I meet what they want to see published, and virtually all of them mention that they need shorter MG and YA books for their customers."
"I watch so many interactions between (adult and young) customers and booksellers in bookstores, and I've lost count of how many times I've seen a customer decline a recommendation because the book is longer than they want."
"For book fanatics like authors/agents/publishers, I think it can be hard to remember that not every young reader is like you (we!) were. A lot of 11-year-olds are daunted by a 90K-word MG novel."
( are kids dumbing down yet again?)
"And, look. In many cases, if a book needs a lot of editorial work—such as helping the author trim 20K words—the publisher won't be inclined to pay as much for it as they would if they felt the book was readier for publication."
She goes on to direct us to an already well know blog post among MG writers on adequate page count ( I will leave the link here below for those who have never read it.)
And so it goes on, and other agents,librarians booksellers,editors chime in with the same observations. Sounds like it´s a logical thing to consider but, will our stories be better for it? Or will they end up being half-baked results of what they were meant to be? I mean, yes, JK Rowling went a bit too far with her word count ( in many cases, quite unnecessary) but HP book 1 was /is considered long to and it´s only about 325 pages. I can´t imagine cutting my book any short than that!
What length do you consider your books will be once you are finished?
Here is the link: f you want a guide to word count ranges in children's/YA, I recommend@literaticat's now-classic blog post here. http://literaticat.blogspot.com/2011/05/wordcount-
The agent´s name is Molly Ker Hawn, if any of you care to follow her tweet. I´m posting here some of the observations made for your consideration. This worries me very much since I´m not very good at getting to the point, cutting to the chase, killing my darlings etc... and my work tends to be rather long. Any thoughts fellow MG and YA writers? @Agente Pete?
The thread begins here:
"I'm reading queries and seeing a trend that's dismaying me: so many very long books. I ask every bookseller I meet what they want to see published, and virtually all of them mention that they need shorter MG and YA books for their customers."
"I watch so many interactions between (adult and young) customers and booksellers in bookstores, and I've lost count of how many times I've seen a customer decline a recommendation because the book is longer than they want."
"For book fanatics like authors/agents/publishers, I think it can be hard to remember that not every young reader is like you (we!) were. A lot of 11-year-olds are daunted by a 90K-word MG novel."
( are kids dumbing down yet again?)
"And, look. In many cases, if a book needs a lot of editorial work—such as helping the author trim 20K words—the publisher won't be inclined to pay as much for it as they would if they felt the book was readier for publication."
She goes on to direct us to an already well know blog post among MG writers on adequate page count ( I will leave the link here below for those who have never read it.)
And so it goes on, and other agents,librarians booksellers,editors chime in with the same observations. Sounds like it´s a logical thing to consider but, will our stories be better for it? Or will they end up being half-baked results of what they were meant to be? I mean, yes, JK Rowling went a bit too far with her word count ( in many cases, quite unnecessary) but HP book 1 was /is considered long to and it´s only about 325 pages. I can´t imagine cutting my book any short than that!
What length do you consider your books will be once you are finished?
Here is the link: f you want a guide to word count ranges in children's/YA, I recommend