Please help a poor newcomer...

[Teresa Edgerton]

I wouldn't exactly call two books of 150K each or three of 100K fast food.

And I notice that there are other threads here on this very site where publishing houses are being taken to task because SFF novels these days are all so long. What happened to the good old days when everything was so much shorter, they say. Remember all the great classics that were under 100,000 words, they ask. It's only authors of very long first novels that I ever hear complain because publishers and the reading public want books to be too short.

But here is the thing that is getting lost here: If your book is good enough, if it likely to appeal to enough readers, then the size won't matter. Look at all the most successful SFF series. But until they read your book and find out, a much greater than average word count may put editors and agents off. So if your book is long, if you really believe that it has to be long, and that dividing it will ruin it (though I suggest you get some knowledgeable betas to read it and help you decide whether that last bit is actually true), then you need to make sure that when you send in your proposal the very next words that an agent or an editor sees in your letter after the word count is spectacularly appealing.

But if you do decide to self publish, so you can bypass the publishers and get to those niche readers, then there are two things you need to keep in mind. Number one is that when you go indie you are going to have an immense amount of competition when it comes to attracting those readers. And number two is that you are going to have to become very good at self promotion, and that begins with writing up a very appealing description of your book to grab their attention. A description very much like the one you would put into a query letter.

Which brings us back to being able to write a first line that really grabs potential readers.

 

[BT Jones]

Thanks @Teresa Edgerton. Sorry, didn't mean to imply that anything 100-150k was fast food. Far from it. I just meant to say that cutting down my book from 300k to 100-150k would be the equivalent of compressing it down to happy meal size. But, yes, you make excellent points, echoing much of the advice I have received already. I'm not someone that can blow their own trumpet particularly well, so self-promotion would be a challenge. However, given that my first story has three distinct acts, each between 80 & 130k, then perhaps there is a release format that can make the story more digestible, perhaps in the same way that modern adult genre TV shows now (like Westworld or Game of Thrones) have single story seasons spread out over 8 to 10 hour-long episodes.

I am close to finishing my 4th and final draft on Act 1 as we speak, but, buoyed by SFFC consensus, I am holding off sending it out again until I do the same treatment to Act 2. Then, given the 1-3 month response time from agents, should any of them bite, I should have the whole story close to being finished.

Thanks again for the sage words. How did you get your first book out to the big wide world?

 

[Mad Alice]

I think you should keep it without trimming and beef it up by about 120,000 words or so.
That would give you the word space to finish your stories. At the same time conversely I would suggest creating a shortened short story and a longer short story set in the same world as a teaser. A taste of your literary trifecka, as it were. This is what you send to Amazing science fiction and other magazines to get a market audience for your work. After a couple of publishing credits I think your agent problems will solve themselves.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, that was a different time. In the mid 1980's was a big boom in science fiction and fantasy, especially fantasy. In the US publishers with SFF lines were buying quite heavily. They had just about reached the point where they were about to realize that even with as many books as they were publishing each month they had over-bought ... but luckily for me, not quite yet. In those days it was still quite common to be able to submit an unsolicited manuscript and someone would at least take a look at it. So, not knowing the window for submitting was rapidly narrowing, I sent my synopsis and sample chapter out to a major US publisher of paperback SFF originals. Unfortunately, they rejected it a few months later with a standard rejection. But when I submitted my proposal to Terri Windling at Ace she wrote back immediately and asked to see the rest. (The whole editorial team had just gone through all the unread manuscripts they had on hand, with the result that when my proposal came in "over-the-transom," as they called it in those days -- actually, of course, I mailed it and it arrived in the usual way -- instead of landing in the middle of a mighty slush-pile where it might have languished for who knew how long, it came to rest on a recently cleared desk.

So there was a lot of good luck and (quite accidental) good timing involved. But I do think I must also have sent them a good synopsis.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Oops. Cross-posted with Mad Alice. Actually, though it may seem counter-intuitive, agents and book editors don't care whether you have sold short stories or not. For a publisher to bring out a novel is a big investment. They will buy the book on its own merits ... or they won't. You could have sold many short stories and even been short-listed for the Neb and the Hugo, but that won't sway them an inch. On the other hand, if you've already had a novel published, people putting together anthologies may actually invite you to submit your short fiction—even if you've never written any. Your short story is only a small part of the whole anthology, and your name looks good on the cover along with the other authors. (And if it turns out that you are horrible at short fiction, whatever your merits as a novelist, they can reject the story that you end up writing for them and still have enough from the other writers to make up a decent-sized anthology.)

 

[BT Jones]

Thanks @Mad Alice and @Teresa Edgerton again. I take all these things on board. Hopefully I can make some kind of impact.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Thanks @Ambrose and @Teresa Edgerton. The more and more I hear, the more I think I am better off going electronic / kindle and potentially self-pub. I just don't think what have I done will necessarily appeal to publishing houses looking for short, digestible product for the modern consumer with no time on their hands. I think my work will end up probably only appealing to a niche market that has time for immersive, long-form works. That's obviously going to mean it reaches far fewer people but... Not sure what I am doing can be carved up and served as fast food.

Many modern publishers don’t just look for quick easy reads. It’s fine to make the decision you are but this isn’t an accurate reason for it (or Strange and Norell, for instance, would never have reached the shelves). There are tons of writers who do immersive long works - it’s just a matter of finding an agent who digs that kind of thing or an indie publisher (many of whom want exactly what you offer, things that are different for the market)

 

[BT Jones]

Many modern publishers don’t just look for quick easy reads. It’s fine to make the decision you are but this isn’t an accurate reason for it (or Strange and Norell, for instance, would never have reached the shelves). There are tons of writers who do immersive long works - it’s just a matter of finding an agent who digs that kind of thing or an indie publisher (many of whom want exactly what you offer, things that are different for the market)

Thanks @Jo Zebedee. Although the pessimist in me is leaning towards self-pub, I haven't given up hope. I have a hyperlink saved (from, I think, an earlier SFFC post perhaps) about an agent search site that perhaps allows a prospective author to pick the most suitable agent. I still hold out hope that my work can appeal to someone somewhere, so i still have an open mind. As the great bard says (and I paraphrase): 'be absolute for death; and death or life shall thereby be the sweeter'.
My all time favorite anecdote / quote!

 

[Ambrose]

@ Teresa Edgerton is right as to font size and line spacing making a difference. For what it's worth my recent sf effort was 68100 words on my computer. It turned into 270 pages. But a book I did ten years ago came in at 610 pages, while a 2d edition which was 40000 words longer appeared from the publisher at 548 pages. Line spacing and font had shrunk. Reviewers were note happy with that difference!.