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You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. Manuscript pages vs. Thread starter Linda B Start date Mar 16, Linda B New Member. Hello, all. I'm working on my first book. Or, does the publisher choose a font size and page size for the book that will give the author a bit of self esteem? I'm using size 12 Times New Roman font. I would be so disappointed if a thick-looking manuscript ended up disappearing between other books on the shelves.
I would like to know if I may need to expand or trim some parts of the manuscript. WriterJohnB Member. Here's how I set up my manuscripts. I'm assuming you're using ms word. Use Courier non-proportional font 1 inch margins Go to format, paragraph, indents and spacing and set line spacing at exactly 25 Also in format, paragraph, go to line and page breaks and turn off widows and orphan control Count the number of pages in your ms.
Personally, I also count the number of chapters, divide by 2 and subtract this no. For word count, multiply by That feels sooooooo short to me, for a novel, but YMMV. More on that in a second. To figure out how we even got to 50k words, we need to look at the economics of books. Other formats of kids books have similar pricing ranges. No, of course not. The more materials it takes to make a book, including and espeically illustrations, color printing, special effects and elements on the cover, the more the price goes up.
I mean, really. Even in hardcover, it will feel thin and the consumer will perceive that as having less value than a longer novel. I love a slim novel. We are dumb and retailers are smart. Well, a publisher can just make my short novel a paperback then you might think. This can be true!
The average time a book spends in hardcover is a year. You can think of this as publishers gouging the poor reader, but those are the same people you want to give you a big, fat advance so….
Back to 50k words. It probably came about from editors talking to typesetters when books were too long or too short and the numbers averaged around to there. It became a kind of benchmark. But personally, I think that if you are writing a story and sail right past 50k words generally speaking, you probably have enough going on in your book—stakes, action, dialog, plot, characterization. If you are struggling to get to 50k, or just eeking past it, then you might need to shore up something.
Maybe your characters need to talk to each other more. You may be a minimalist, which, god bless you, but in my experience, it means you need something more in the story of your work, not just more words. Again, most of this info here relates to adult and YA tbh hardcover novels. They might go for more lines per page by squishing the line spacing. Instead of proper double-spacing, like this,. A writer wanting to pad a skimpy manuscript can just as easily stretch the line or word spacing, increase the type size, and make the margins larger.
Instead of artificially padding or squashing your manuscript, examine your motives. Stop thinking about quantity, and inspect for quality. Is all that dialogue effective? Is there not enough action up front? Is your book too long or too short? They mainly just want to know if readers will keep reading. You can customize your status bar to keep a running count of pages and words among many other things.
The count will change as you type. If you highlight a chunk of text with your cursor, it will show you the number of words you selected. For this image of my status bar, I highlighted words:. Or go to the Review tab and click on Word Count. Please see our commenting policy. What Agents and Editors Want Agents and editors want what they want. How Many Words to a Page? The agents and editors who use such apps understand their foibles.
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