by Bobbie Christmas
Q: After five years I have completed my autobiography. After submitting many query letters with the word count of 777,568, I have been informed that as a new author no one is going to take a chance and publish my book because the cost would be too great. I am told the book should not be more than 90,000 words. How can you help me condense my book, and what would the cost be?
A: Publishers do prefer most first-time authors to keep their books at or under 100,000 words, and for good reason. Big books are poor investments for publishers. Long books cost more to produce, a fact that increases the necessary retail price, which in turn lowers the potential sales volume. Publishers therefore rarely accept manuscripts of more than 100,000 words unless the author already has a passionate fan following.
You have put a great deal of work into your book, though, and deleting 80 percent or more could be heartbreaking. I feel for you, and I can help, but not right away. Let me explain.
I assist authors, rather than scalp them, so let me make some suggestions. Whether your editor charges by the hour, page, or total word count, you can save a great deal of money by reducing the word count yourself before sending the book for editing. But wait! You won’t have to cut out almost 700,000 words if you follow my advice.
Before I go further, though, I must ask if the book is an actual autobiography. The term usually refers to self-written biographies by celebrities, politicians, and other well-known people. If the author is an ordinary person writing about interesting personal experiences, the book should be labeled a memoir, rather than an autobiography.
If indeed it is a memoir, you’re in luck. Memoirs give authors many ways to break their stories into several books. Whereas autobiographies cover a timeline and give a litany of facts, memoirs can be separated into categories. I’ve broken my own memoirs into three books by making one strictly about my life with animals. Another is about unusual or funny incidents that happened to me at work. A third covers odd or hilarious events I’ve experienced in my dating life.
One of my clients broke his memoirs into two books. One covered his travel adventures. The second covered stories about his challenges while living in a foreign country.
In your case perhaps one manuscript can concentrate on interesting incidents that happened to you during your youth and teen years. A second manuscript could cover events when you were in your twenties. Other manuscripts could concentrate on your thirties, and so forth. You can decide how you’d like to group your stories so that each book can stand on its own.
After you’ve broken the document into several manuscripts, you can go through each one and delete weak, least interesting, or least important events or chapters, thereby reducing the word count and making each standalone book even stronger.
Next you can read books such as mine, Write In Style, to learn which words and phrases to find and delete to make the writing even tighter.
Soon you’ll find you’ve reduced the single manuscript of more than 777,000 words into five or more tightly written memoirs that may be closer to 100,000 words each. Only then is it time to send one or more of the manuscripts to me for editing.
When you break the original book into several books, I can work with each one individually and give you the best deal for your dollar.
Turning one too-long file into several means you won’t have to gut your original manuscript. More of your stories will be preserved, each book will be economically feasible, and you’ll have more books to sell.
Bobbie Christmas, book editor, author of Write In Style: Use Your Computer to Improve Your Writing, and owner of Zebra Communications, will answer your questions, too. Send them to Bobbie@zebraeditor.com. Read more Ask the Book Doctor questions and answers at www.zebraeditor.com.
