Childrens > YA wordcounts

[Brian G Turner]

A blogpost about word counts for picture books up to YA:
Jennifer Represents...: Wordcount Dracula

(We may have had this post before.)

However, I was surprised to see YA can be as low as 40k words, though higher is preferred (and that Fault in our Stars is only 65k)...

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I expect Philip Pullman has exploded through this "rule" ...

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I think we're so used to being in a long word count genre, we forget that not everything has to be an epic. With Waters and the Wild I came in at 60,000 (just - although, as ever, that looks like going up judging by my editing notes) and was worried (it's an adult book) but no agent or publisher expressed any concern. Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane isn't much longer than a novella.

 

[Juliana]

Jennifer's word count post must be pretty spot on as agents and publishers are always linking to it.

One of my local writing buddies has a clause on the contract for her second book (YA contemporary) which states that it can be no longer than 80,000 words. An actual contractual clause.