This is what I have been asking myself lately. I still have some revising to do and have been having printer problems (long story!) I've gotten some feedback from those I've let read the pdf copy of my story.
One such person is a long-time family friend who thinks the story is too short for a book. It's currently 87 pages. I now wonder how long it needs to be to become a book. I recently posted a question to Yahoo Answers asking how many words are need for a memoir and two different responses as of yet said at least 60,000. I have yet to attempt a word count or even just estimate one. Just how many pages does any typed manuscript have to be? His other idea was perhaps a magazine article? But who will read that?
I'm waiting to hear from one of the ladies in my book club. She'd printed out the pdf, but the pages got out of order, so I asked her to let me have it so I could put them in the proper order. I then copied it to send to the friend mentioned above. He'd finished it sometime last week. Others to whom I've e-mailed the pdf have yet to respond.
And all this time, I've been wondering how much longer I should be waiting to find an editor. I have been working on this story since February.
If it's self-published, it doesn't matter. I don't know much about memoirs, though. For fiction, 60,000 words is considered on the short side. There are people who write 100,000 words! But yes, 80-something pages does seem short. You'll likely be 200 manuscript pages (double-spaced, 25 lines per page).
ReplyDeleteIt depends on the genre. And As Steph said, if it's self published you can do anything. The result will depend on book format size, font and spacing.
ReplyDeleteI seldom write over 60K these days, and often less. A lot of folks are busy and don't want a long read. Unless it's genre driven, those that have a large word count often break their book down into a trilogy.