This is perhaps a silly question, but how do agents define a "page," typically? Is there a standard number of words? I ask because a printed page in a book tends to be about two-thirds of an 8/5x11 page in Microsoft Word.
Not silly! There’s no standard number (a page of short dialogue, for ex, will have fewer words than a long, dense paragraph) but you don’t have to worry about a manuscript page vs. a formatted book page. Format your manuscript in Word using standard one-inch margins, 12 point font, Times New Roman font. Then however many pages they ask for, go by wherever that falls in the Word document. If they ask for word count instead, then go by that instead of worrying about the number.
It’s all a bit of a ballpark, anyway, and agents know it’s not going to be exact. If they ask for 20 pages, say, and you have a chapter break in there that eats up a page, and some pages with fewer words, and so you wish you could really send 22 pages instead… those “lost” pages aren’t going to make a difference. If they love the book at 20 pages they won’t miss the extra words, and if they aren’t going to request the book after 20 page then they aren’t going to request it after 22 pages either.
If you have a tiny bit of text that goes over the page count but wraps up a chapter/scene, it’s okay to add that extra paragraph or so. Not a lot, so that it looks like you’re trying to sneak in more! (Again, that last page isn’t going to make the difference.) But you can finish the sentence even if it runs over.
This is a good q and if it’s okay with you, I’ll include it in this week’s ’stack, which is all about follow-up questions after the last newsletter!
Thank you so much! Sure, please feel free to include.
The other wrinkle here is that many agents seem to want the text pasted into the body of the email, which means there wouldn't be any visible page breaks, unless you were to insert them manually. So in order for an agent to count the number of pages, I suppose they would have to copy the text into a Word document or similar.
This is perhaps a silly question, but how do agents define a "page," typically? Is there a standard number of words? I ask because a printed page in a book tends to be about two-thirds of an 8/5x11 page in Microsoft Word.
Not silly! There’s no standard number (a page of short dialogue, for ex, will have fewer words than a long, dense paragraph) but you don’t have to worry about a manuscript page vs. a formatted book page. Format your manuscript in Word using standard one-inch margins, 12 point font, Times New Roman font. Then however many pages they ask for, go by wherever that falls in the Word document. If they ask for word count instead, then go by that instead of worrying about the number.
It’s all a bit of a ballpark, anyway, and agents know it’s not going to be exact. If they ask for 20 pages, say, and you have a chapter break in there that eats up a page, and some pages with fewer words, and so you wish you could really send 22 pages instead… those “lost” pages aren’t going to make a difference. If they love the book at 20 pages they won’t miss the extra words, and if they aren’t going to request the book after 20 page then they aren’t going to request it after 22 pages either.
If you have a tiny bit of text that goes over the page count but wraps up a chapter/scene, it’s okay to add that extra paragraph or so. Not a lot, so that it looks like you’re trying to sneak in more! (Again, that last page isn’t going to make the difference.) But you can finish the sentence even if it runs over.
This is a good q and if it’s okay with you, I’ll include it in this week’s ’stack, which is all about follow-up questions after the last newsletter!
Thank you so much! Sure, please feel free to include.
The other wrinkle here is that many agents seem to want the text pasted into the body of the email, which means there wouldn't be any visible page breaks, unless you were to insert them manually. So in order for an agent to count the number of pages, I suppose they would have to copy the text into a Word document or similar.
Yes, true!