Concerning book length

[bakura_fan]

I am in the process of writing a book. I have written 6 chapters, out of 20 (I wrote out sections as to what will happen in each chapter). my only concern is the pattern of length that the chapters are, anywhere from 4-5 pages. So, if I keep this pace I'll have just a little under 100 pages. I'm very concerned because I feel that that's not enough...but I don't know what I can do. I don't want to focus on how many pages, but rather the dialogue and the story line. So, here's my question. If it becomes a little under or a little over 100 pages, do you think that will affect the chances of it getting published? It's a fantasy/adventure story aimed for all ages (some violence, so probably not too young).

[rii namuras]

[color="Red"](I've read some [good] short books, yes, under 100 pages. I have no idea how length would affect publishing since I know nothing of that field, but I have read books of that size.)

(Unfortunately none of them are recently (and the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are Sonlight [homeschool curriculum] books), so it may ave been that trends have moved away from that?)[/color]

[Esoteric]

Well, it's true that publishers do look at length, but I don't believe they have a 'magic' number of pages in mind. I just glanced at all the old children's books on my shelf and they typically range between 130-180 pages. Now, have you taken into account the page size in your estimate?--gauging length by 'pages' can be difficult because of changes in page/font size. Of course, the best thing you can do is research...what are the other books out there like for your target audience?

Personally, I wouldn't worry about length until the story is written. Word counts always fluctuate during edits, so focus on writing a good story. Once that's done you can step back and decide whether something more should be added.

[uc pseudonym]

Can you tell me what the word count of your story is? That's a far more reliable indicator of length than page counts (most word processors have a feature to automatically calculate this). There aren't many types of novels less than 50,000 words; what is the genre?

Book length does not matter within a certain broad range, but outside of that it may become a problem. Large stories are less of an issue, particularly in the fantasy field. But if you have just 20K words, that's a novella that won't sell (unless you're already a brand name author).

[bakura_fan]

Well last night before I went to bed I thought of a couple more plot things I could add. My word count? Don't know...I'll probably figure everything out once it's all written, then I'll post all that stuff. (Trying to finish before Christmas. fun fun.) Genre would probably be fantasy slight pro Christian type thing...^-^; Don't really know what to call it. It has lots of different things in it.

Edit: figured out how to word count. Uhm. Prologue + 5 chapters (almost done with chapter 5) = 8350 words.

[uc pseudonym]

So you're looking at around 32K words, then? That is a bit low. There may be children's literature in that range, but I'm not up to date in that field. Most likely it wouldn't be good to change the plot to increase length, so just write it as you feel led. Then once you're done you can worry about the word count on the revision.