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Why publishers refuse to look at manuscripts over 120k words or answering the FAQ: My book is 200k words and not halfway finished yet, can I get it published?

Why publishers refuse to look at manuscripts over 120k words or answering the FAQ: My book is 200k words and not halfway finished yet, can I get it published?

Why publishers refuse to look at manuscripts over 120k words or answering the FAQ: My book is 200k words and not halfway finished yet, can I get it published?

This question gets asked a Lot, especially on Reddit, where we see it asked a few times EVERY DAY.









Why publishers refuse to look at manuscripts over 120k words or answering the FAQ: My book is 200k words and not halfway finished yet, can I get it published?


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Chapter and page count mean nothing in terms of how big a book is.

Reason:

  • * the average printed mass market paperback 5x7" book has 250 words to a page... this is only 25,000 words per 100 pages or 75k words per average 300 page printed paperback


  • * the average printed trade paperback 6x9" book has 330 words to a page... this is 33,000 words per 100 pages or 99k words per average 300 page printed paperback


  • * the average digital Word or Google doc is formatted to 8x11" copy paper and has 750 words to a page... this is a mega whopping 75,000 words per 100 pages or 150k words per average 300 page printed paperback


  • * Chapters can be anything from one single word to 20k or more words.


An Epic Novel is anything over 120k words, and called epic due to the size of the printing press machine required to print it.

As the bulk of traditional publishing houses do not publish epic novels, due to the fact their print press machines are physically incapable of making a book that thick, you will be stuck self publishing it. Traditional publishing will not be an option for most anyone writing epic novels. There are literally only seven publishing houses which accept epic novels.

Do keep in mind that publishing houses and agents judge books by word counts, not page counts, as the page counts of 8x11" sheets of paper or Google Docs does not accurately reflect the page counts of a printed 5x7" paperback book. And if you use extra big or extra small fonts, or non standard margins in your document, your word counts will be skewed way more, meaning a 180 pages in Google docs could be as little as a 10k word short story or as long as a 230k word epic trilogy, depending on your settings.

Without knowing the exact word count, there is no way to tell if it is too long, too short, or just right.

You need to remember that the printing press machine used to print your book can only bind certain thicknesses. The word count a publisher accepts is based on the arm size on the printing machine they own. There are literally only 4 publishing houses in America, which own a machine capable of printing a 120k+ word book. And only 3 publishers in Europe with those machines. Meaning you are limited to literally **only seven publishing houses on the planet** that you can submit your book to, and if they don't like your story/idea, you have no more options.

Most printing machines max out at 80k words of page thickness, which is the reason that is the upper limit publishing houses accept. There are more than twenty thousand publishing houses in America and Europe who own this type of printing machine, so you have a better chance of getting published if your word count is under 80k words, simply because you (or your agent) has the option to query more publishing houses.

Remember, publishing houses can't just wave a magic wand and their machines magically bind larger sized books. Those machines cost several million dollars each. When you try to tell a publishing house "But it's a great story and I can't remove more words..." You are literally saying to them: "But you can easily dish out $forty million dollars to buy the bigger machine to print my 120k word book that'll only earn you five thousand dollars in it's lifetime!"

Don't expect a publishing house that owns a standard size machine, to dish out millions of dollars to buy the epic sized machine, just to publish your novel, because they won't.

For traditional publishing you have two options here: edit down to a word count that can be printed by the twenty thousand publishing houses who own standard sizes machines, or pray one of the only seven publishing houses on the planet who owns an epic sized machine loves and accepts your work.

Believe me, no amount of you telling them how great and unremovable your words are is going to convince a publisher to pay millions to buy a machine that can print up your 120k+ word book.

If it really is a super big word count, you might be best publishing it as a web novel on Royal Road or ScribbleHub or a similar place.

Or, if you are self publishing, you could divide it up into several books, like how Harry Potter was released as 7 books, and publish them on Amazon.


Also… why archive.org? You do know you will be **surrendering ALL rights to your world and characters** and your book will be put into the public domain for anyone else to publish and sell on Amazon, if you list it with Archive.org.


>what exactly is the market for epic novels nowadays? I only know of a few select pieces, like War and Peace and some Hindu texts.

Literally every book published by TOR https://www.tor.com/ is epic, as they own one of those epic printing presses I mentioned, and they publish thousands of titles a year.

Baen Books https://www.baen.com/ another publishing house in possession of an epic sized machine, only accepts book that are minimum 130k words and publishes obviously nothing but epic novels, hundreds of new titles every month.

The infamous Random Penguin https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ literally the largest publishing house in the world, publishes on average, wait for it, twenty thousand new titles every month... the bulk of them epic.

I'd say epic novels are doing pretty well, and anyone who reads traditionally published paperbacks knows this.












Why publishers refuse to look at manuscripts over 120k words or answering the FAQ: My book is 200k words and not halfway finished yet, can I get it published?




Thank you for reading:

Why publishers refuse to look at manuscripts over 120k words or answering the FAQ: My book is 200k words and not halfway finished yet, can I get it published?

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So, I was over on Reddit, you like I often am, and found this question. And answered it, like I do. However, the answer I initially gave was a simple generic answer. If you want to read my original answer unaltered, simply click on Reddit's embed feature links which Reddit provides for webmasters to be able to post their answers on their websites, while linking back to the original thread on Reddit (if you didn't know Reddit offered and encouraged the use of this feature, look for it in the "share" features underneath every post, comment, and reply on Reddit).

I am answering random questions today about writing, self-publishing, character creation, and world building, over on Reddit and decided to take my answers from there and expand upon them even further over here. So that's what this page is. Me rambling on about various aspects of world building techniques I use when writing the Quaraun series. The questions I am answering are embedded here. Clicking the link in the embedded question will take you to the original Reddit page where you can see the original answer along with other people's answers. If you wish to comment, you can do so on the Reddit page where a place to do so is provided.

In any case, as with all of my Reddit answers found on my site here, my original post on Reddit is much shorter then the article here.













What Is This Site?

I'm an author. This is an author home page. It's about me, my life, my books, my hobbies, my home town, and anything else that applies to me and my life. 

Since starting my writing career in 1978, I have written 130+ novels, 2,000+ short stories, 6,000+ non-fiction articles (ALL are found on this site), a few dozen stage plays, 12,000+ blog posts, and a few comic book scripts for Disney's Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck (I only worked for Disney one year (in 2005) and only wrote a few stories for their Danish comic books).

NOTE: I ONLY write the Quaraun series (aka The Twighlight Manor series aka The Adventures of Quaraun the Insane). In recent years there has been an issue with impersonators trying to pass books off as written by me, notably several non-fiction and Erotica books. I write neither nonfiction nor Erotica.

ALL of my books and their cover arts are listed on my website here. Beware of any books you find claiming to be me. If the books are NOT listed here on my website, they are NOT my books.

In fiction works, I specialize in Weird/Bizarro Tales set in 40th century CyberPunk-Quasi Medieval, Cozy Dark Fantasy and Science Fiction worlds featuring an intersex Elf and his Faerie husband main characters.  I DO NOT WRITE ANY OTHER SERIES - THIS SERIES IS THE ONLY ONE I WRITE.

Non-fiction (found ONLY here on my site) is daily updates of events in my life, and how-tos on how I write my novels.

I DO NOT write Erotica.

I DO NOT write books with HUMAN characters.

The Erotica books and books with Human characters, that you are finding, are written by scammers trying to impersonate me.

There is an ongoing FBI investigation into this matter. If you find any such books, please report them to FBI Agengt Andy Drewer @207–774–9322

The FBI believes the people behind the impersonation accounts showing up, are relatives of the woman who murdered my son.




 | Index |



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Wendy Christine Allen 🌸💖🦄 aka EelKat 🧿💛🔮👻

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