Two Rants: Word Count and Scam Agents

Let’s get ready to ruuuummmmmmbllle.

Rant warning full in place, y’all. I don’t want to hear it.

Rant #1: Word Count

So over at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books, as well as elsewhere on the blogsophere, people are whingeing about the new word counts for Harlequin category novels. The main argument seems to be that they’ll be getting “less story” for their money. Then, in the comments section, they really go to town, accusing Harlequin of everything from trying to bilk their authors out of more money (as if they are being paid per word now! Ha! If so, the Bombshell and Super authors would be rolling in the money that Presents authors make every time they type “tycoon”).

It starts to get utterly ridiculous towards the end, as authors who clearly haven’t received word about the new guidelines and applicable lines (hint: all category) start arguing about whether or not their single title Harlequin Enterprises releases are “too long.” Luna is not on the list. They are discussing category books, where word count is paramount.

Poor Susan Gable, in an attempt to stem the tide of madness sweeping the blogosphere, posts some information she gleaned from her editor:

In the effort of full disclosure, I have now heard from my editor with
clarification. I’m seeking more clarification.
Super authors were notified that in essence, this is a change in HOW we count words. Instead of using pages at 250 wpp method, we’re moving to using computer word count. That would mean, for example, that my last Superromance, which was 340 ms pages (85K on the dot by the old method) and was 71K-ish by Word computer word count, is just what they’re looking for. Actually, if we go by the
computer word count, I was actually on the “low” side of new 70-75K word
count. Darn!

Did that stop it? No. So I’m considering it my civic duty to make sure this info gets out again. Because people seem pathologically incapable of understanding word count, which to me is a relatively simple concept.

Back in the day, when all we had were typewriters, there was no “word count” feature. So the industry came up with a standard. Typewriter font, double spaced, held on average over a novel length, 250 words per page. They knew on the basis of the thousands and thousands of books they published, how many pages of finished novel a give number of typewritten pages made. That was how much novel they wanted. So they based their word count on that estimate. And that’s what it is, an ESTIMATE. Soemtimes wildly inaccurate one if you happen to be a particularly “dense” writer, who uses long description filled paragraphs, or if you happen to be a particularly dialogue heavy writer who used a lot of white space. But it was an average, and it was good enough to become and industry standard.

Now, I see you say, we do not use typewriters anymore. So why are some publishers still adhering to that old standard? Well, I’ll tell you, Because computer word count often — not always, but sometimes — sucks. It does not account for the fact that your entire novel is written in haiku, with enough white space to fill in for the Alaskan tundra in January. Some of the programs count every punctuation mark as a separate word, rather than as a separate character. “Well, that’s dumb,” would be nine words instead of three. Multiply that by 10,000 and you can see what the problem with accuracy is. Some of the programs add in all the words in your heading. If your manuscript is entitled CONFESSIONS OF A SECRET SOCIETY GIRL and you have your last name and page number in your heading, congratulations, you just added about 3,000 words to your book. Do you see how this can get messy? So when Candy on Smart Bitches asks why can’t they get with the program, the reason is that they think their method is more accurate and more likely to turn up a product built to their specifications. They can’t police your word processing programs, or how often you hit your “Enter” key. They can police the number of pages they get in the mail.

In most cases — most, not all, but most — this doesn’t matter one little bit. Editors can see a huge thick stack of double spaced pages and figure out that it’s enough for a book. But in some cases, such as the case of Harlequin category novels, where every single book in a given line have the same number of pages (and that, by the way, is so they know that the same number of books fit in the box shipped out to stores, every author, every month), it’s kind of tough to tell if the book is 3,000 words over just by looking at the stack of paper. And there is a huge, huge difference between figuring things according to computer word count, which does not take into account white space, and figuring things by the other method.

And to illustrate it, though I do not write for Harlequin, I would like to show you the difference. My first novel is 75,000 words according to the Word Count feature of Microsoft Word. This is how Bantam Dell figures it. However, my manuscript, in Courier 12, is 88,500 words. That’s a huge freaking difference, folks. Now, this didn’t surprise anyone at my publisher’s because we each knew how they were figuring the word count beforehand. It’s only a problem for you if you are submitting to both houses that figure it oe way and houses that figure it another. And it’s REALLY only a problem if you are submitting to houses like Harlequin cateogry houses, who have strict requirement for word count. But Harlequin explained how they wanted it, and how they wanted it figured, right there on their web page. If you were following their submission guidelines (and anyone submitting anywhere should be folowing submission guidelines) you know this in advance, you figure out your wordcount according to the way the publisher counts it,a nd you include it in the publisher and editor-specific query letter that you have so loveingly and carefull crafted to the publisher’s specifications.

I cannot tell you why this seems so hard for people to understand. The word count of my book does not shift 13000 words because I change fonts, people. The method of counting does. Do not get riled up. It’s the same as saying that something is a pound here and a .45 kilos in Europe. It’s not both 1 and .45, it’s a location and conversion thing. They are using a different system of measurement. Does that make it easier to understand? So my book is 75,000 words, or 88.5k Courier12 count. Itls like saying you ran 5k or 3.3 miles.

But this is all moot because apparently Harlequin is switching over. So the word count isn’t changing, no more than I cut 13,000 words out of my book. It’s the same exact story, same exact word count, figured a different way. So… no more complaining.

(Honestly, my guess is that these so-called “long authors” who are now being told to write shorter so their stuff doesn’t bleed into the margins WERE using computer word count already, so they were actually turning in 88k books into SIM, which wanted 75k stories. That why all the authors you see online are being told by their editors that “they are fine” — because they were adhering to the correct conversion method already.)

Rant #2: Scam Agents

I read this post recently on Miss Snark’s blog. It’s regarding a scam agency listing its business “successes”:

We are bigger than a small agency and smaller than a large agency. We have about
15 people total and as of 2nd quarter, 2005 we have over 60 active conversations
on going with buyers and 3 option agreements in negotiations in our screenplay
division. We just sold our 4th book deal (to a publisher in England) and we are
confident of more success later this year. (A 5th deal is being signed as we
speak). We market to the larger and medium sized publishers and producers. We
have had 5 successes now in the last 2 years (fyi: most agencies only have 1 or
2 deals every couple of years, if that.).

Miss Snark says, “Bullshit,” and I concur. They sold five books in two years? Off the top of my head, without even going to Publisher’s Lunch, I can think of about 25 books that my agent and her associates sold this year. (Granted, they’ve been having a banner year, but I’m probably forgetting a few, and so even if I’m only forgetting five, that’s ten deals a piece this year alone.) So their claim about agents only making one or two deals every few years is such phenomenal bullshit that I don’t even know where to go with that.

And the problem is, people believe it. They believe it the way that they believe that bit about paying 8 thousand bucks to an agent for “processing,” that they believe you need to pay to be published, that they believe, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary for anyone who cares to even subscribe to the free edition of Pub Lunch, that no one will sign new writers or publish them (at least three of the book deals my agent and her associates made this year were by people who had never ever ever, not once, published a book before). They believe it even though it’s written all over creation that an agent should be making 15% of what you do, and 15% of one or two books a year every few years would never ever be enough to support yourself on, unless your client is named James Patterson, who, you’ll note, writes a hell of lost more than two books every few years. If this one deal you are making is for a million dollars, then yeah, okay, you’re fine. But the million dollar deal writers are few and far between, so “most agencies” are not representing them. “Most agencies” are representing “most writers” and “most writers” are not the millionaires.

I get so angry when I read crap like this and know that people are buying it. Like, really really, teeth-grindingly, red-faced, wanna-hit-something angry. And I wonder where these people are that believe this. And I wonder why they haven’t stumbled across Preditors and Editors, or Writer Beware, or any other professional organization, or any of the billion litblogs that would reveal how very very wrong any of these things are. Or Publisher’s Lunch, where they can look up the deals if they want and keep a running tally and track agency fees in their head.

Or is it that they’d rather be fooled? Willful ignorance, as I postulated before?

Okay, rant over. As you were. But really, I swear, if I run into you scam agents somewhere, I’m going to deck you.