Thursday, June 02, 2005

Manuscript

I just discovered something interesting: manuscript format.
Apparently, it's not actual word count that publishers are interested in. It's an estimated word count. The whole document needs to be in 12-point Courier, double-spaced, with 1-inch margins all around, and you estimate the words by multiplying the number of pages by 250.
After changing my draft to manuscript format, I have 111 pages (not counting the title page) and that means an estimated word count of 27,750. There's a little more to it than that, but when I'm finished I'll figure that out.

I've also discovered that 35,000 words (calculated this way) is sufficient for a paperback book. It looks like I won't have to stretch to get to the goal.

1 comment:

  1. I would just threaten to send the evil robot after them if they disagree with you on the word count. DOOMAGEDDON!

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