Monday, April 28, 2014

The Word Count Worry or AR BookFinder

I've been working on edits for my novel the last week and have gotten super stressed over word count. See, since it's a fantasy there are a lot of words. We're talking 92k and climbing with the new scenes I've added in which means I'll be going through and nipping a few other places.

But being fresh off the query grind (which I've been on for the past 7 years--started in college), I'm hyper aware of what range a YA novel needs to be in. For YA fantasy, most agents suggest 90,000-99,000 which is pretty high considering other genres in YA should be over 80,000. But still, I worry about what my book is going to look like when edits are through.

I decided to go online and look for other YA books that I love and think are pretty thick to wee what their word count is. I ended up finding this website called AR BookFinder that literally made my week. It is a treasure trove of information about books, including their final word count!44

When you first go in, it will ask you whether you are a "teacher", "parent", "student" or "librarian". While I feel like I'm two of these things, I ended up choosing "student" since I was going on that site to learn (the other option I considered was librarian since I loan out books).

So here are some of the word counts I found:

Image from Goodreads
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
YA Fantasy

 Word count = 81, 215



The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
YA Fantasy

 Word count =102,803


Poison Study by Maria V Snyder
YA Fantasy

 Word count = 98,315


Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
YA Dystopian
Word count = 76,089

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi
YA Dystopian

 Word count = 87,078


Incarnate by Jodi Meadows
YA Fantasy

 Word count = 81,248


Defiance by CJ Redwine
YA Fantasy

 Word count = 96,276


So there are some of the titles I looked up to compare my book to. Since I'm writing fantasy, I did quite a few fantasy books but they have a wide database. Ever wanted to know what your novel would compare to in thickness from the books on your shelf? With AR BookFinder, all you have to do is look it up! I am so happy I found this website and could spend hours on there looking up word counts.

Hope this helps any of you fretting about how big your novel is getting! Or maybe you just want to know more info about your favorite novel. Either way, this site is can definitely help you out!
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousApril 28, 2014 at 3:32 PM

    What an awesome tool to utilize when writing! I get caught up in word count angst a lot... mostly because I never feel like I have enough. And when I think I do, I always stress about do I have too many? Not enough? What do other books have? Thanks for sharing this and good luck to you with your writing!

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