Publishers Need to Stress Quality, Not Quantity

Selection by word-count is senseless.

I appreciated the candor of the book agent’s rejection letter:

“A manuscript of 27,024 words is barely considered a novella. In print it would only be around 80 pages. Most novels in the marketplace are between 80,000 and 100,000 words.”

My novel’s manuscript eventually came to 39,598 words, which is far below the cut-off point set by many agents. One literary agent said he wouldn’t consider any manuscript that was less than 64,000 words. That barrier is widely applied.

If that arbitrary standard had been applied in the past, we would not have had the chance to read Animal Farm; Fahrenheit 451; Heart of Darkness; Jonathan Livingston Seagull; Lord of the Flies; The Little Prince; The Old Man and the Sea; The Pearl; and The Screwtape Letters.

The screening kicks in at the agent level. The old days of “over the transom” submissions are dead. Most publishers require that manuscripts be submitted via agents. If the agents are saying no, then the author is blocked.

That was what I faced with my latest book: Pilate’s Magician: A Novel of the Resurrection.

Although the novel is about a reclusive Roman lawyer who is asked by Pontius Pilate to review decisions made during the trial of Jesus, I was determined that readers not be swamped with legalese, philosophy, or theology. Clarity without oversimplification was needed and yet, at the same time, it was important to cite the numerous mistakes that led to a crucifixion without a guilty verdict.

This approach was taken for several reasons.

After reading a novel, I have never said, “This book could have used another three or four thousand words.”

I believe that setting a minimum word-count on novels is the equivalent of setting a minimum color-count on paintings.

Finally, my primary rule for fiction or nonfiction is simple: Get to the point.

I decided to bypass collecting rejection slips and publish the novel on Amazon.

Is my book fancy? No. But it is well-written.

Is it in the bookstores? Not at this point. Give me time. It is available at Amazon.

Is the novel getting good reviews? As a matter of fact, it is, and one reason is the book’s clarity. Clarity that was in part produced by the absence of “padding.”

That should not be surprising because there are times when less is more.

I’ll close by simply begging the literary agents and editors of the world to go back to their roots and revive why they went into the publishing biz.

They did not go there to count words, but to discover and develop talent while producing great books.

Let this be their liberating slogan:

Word-Count? No!

High Quality? Yes!

We’ll all benefit from that.