[Carl Hackman Posts: 6 Status: Offline I love kids' books! WWW]

My novel lengths and status at the moment:

Gerald: Upper MG, Humorous Fantasy - Querying - 77,000 (HP published at 77,500,  Terry Pratchett Upper MG novels consistently 90k+; novels from these two authors I used for reference.  JKR's was a debut but obviously TP is very well established.)
Jaguar: Upper MG, Contemp Fantasy - In Revision - 70,000
Wilfrid: Upper MG, Medieval Fantasy - WIP - heading for high 60's

I have seen a wide range of word counts for Upper MG but I think fantasy gives more leeway.  I do think that Gerald's word count may be hurting my query although no rejection has mentioned it yet.

[sameyers Posts: 80 Status: Offline WWW]

Thank you so much! This is a wonderful link.

God bless,
Susan

[Melissa Posts: 852 Status: Offline]

My first two MG books (fantasy adventure, ages 9-12) are 73k & 71k.  The third  one (in revision right now) is at 68k.  I expect it'll expand another 2-4k (mine always do).


I think the actual contract is for 45k-65k in length, but I'm not that length would have ever worked for this story. I believe, however, that those numbers for length are how they define "middle grade" as there is at least one other MG contract with the same house that uses the same numbers for length.

[Barbara Etlin Posts: 2,255 Status: Offline WWW]

I think fantasy gets more leeway for higher word counts.

If you are a debut author, it's a good idea to aim for the target lengths that literaticat mentions in the link above. Once you're a proven author, you can get away with extra long or extra short manuscripts.

[Mike Jung]

The version of my book that sold was approximately 40k words, and it ended up at 53k after going through the editorial process.