A double-spaced page in 12-point Times New Roman, with standard one-inch margins, is about 250 words. In the historical period between the invention of the typewriter and the invention of Word Count (known as “the Counting Times”) books about writing would tell you to count the words in a handful of lines to come up with an average line-length, then multiply that by the number of lines on the page in order to get a rough page estimate, then repeat this for a number of pages to figure out an average word count per page, then multiply that by the number of pages to arrive at the word count of your manuscript, which worked pretty well if you remembered to number your pages correctly while in the midst of a your mad creative ferment, but if you weren’t completely certain you had typed the correct number at the top of every one of hundreds of pages, you would of course have to count the pages as well, just to be sure.

As every aspiring novelist knows, keeping a running tally of your word count is an integral part of the workday. This made counting words an important method of avoiding actual writing in the days before technology advanced to bring us the current golden age, when you can play with fonts or change the theme on your blog or see what everybody else is doing on Facebook and easily get  through entire days without doing any writing at all.

If you do manage to write something, the above figures are the traditional lengths for trade publishing. Publishers are used to producing and selling books at these lengths, and readers are used to buying those books. The switch to ebooks might be changing all this.  Distribution costs are the same for a 30,000 word novella as they are for a 200,000 word epic. Readers are getting used to buying individual short stories, like a single song on iTunes.  For now, though, you decrease your chances, however marginally, of selling your book if you do not give people what they are used to getting.

That said, unless you have already signed a contract that specifies word count, you should write until you have finished telling your story. If you write a good enough book, somebody will figure out how to publish it.

If you’re here because of How Not To Write A Novel, a book I wrote with Sandra Newman, you’ll probably want to visit our website for the book, here. Our new book, Read This Next, will be published in the US in November, and in the UK in December.

If you’re interested in having me work with you on your book, you can find out a bit about me and how that would work.  You can also read an excerpt from my novel, Age of Consent, or just get in touch, possibly for reasons I haven’t anticipated.

The preferred font is 12-point Times New Roman. Do not use any unusual or interesting fonts; do not use colors other than black.

Number your pages sequentially; that is, do not start from one at the beginning of each chapter. Along with the page number, you should identify your manuscript by putting your last name, or the name of the novel, in the header.

Paragraphs should be indented. Don’t put an extra line space between paragraphs.

Do not bind or staple the manuscript. In movies, you’ll sometimes see manuscripts in a binder, or otherwise assembled into the form of a book, but that’s because the people who made the movie are used to screenplays. Screenplays are presented in a binder, but novels are never bound. A rubber band is helpful, though.

I want to be a novelist, it’s all I’ve ever dreamed of doing, but the world is in such a bad state, and it’s getting worse all the time: global warming, resource depletion, species becoming extinct, deforestation. Is it selfish to spend all my time making up stories instead of getting out there and helping?

I’m very glad you came to me with this question, because it calls not only on  my knowledge of publishing and writing, but also on my skills as a volunteer unaccredited freelance bioethicist.

One of the major reasons for all of these environmental issues is that there are just too many of us, using up too much stuff. If there were half as many people, things wouldn’t be going wrong anywhere near as quickly–things might even start to get better. By choosing to become a writer, you are almost guaranteeing that you’ll never be able to support a child, or yourself. Your letter indicates that you would have the insight to figure this out, and would therefore forgo reproducing, thus doing your small part to make the world better.

On the other hand, you might be wildly successful, in which case you would be in position to start a foundation, contribute lots of money to environmental causes, and become a spokesperson for anything you want.  So really, it’s win-win as far as the world is concerned. It would be selfish of you not to become a novelist.

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