They came up with something like eighteen hours worth of footage for the first Lord of the Rings movie. Long initial drafts are okay, and they’re sometimes necessary to figure out what the story is that you want to tell. And you don’t necessarily need to worry about it in the first-draft stage. I know that five or six hundred words doesn’t sound like much. Since nonfiction picture books are often used in classrooms for school-aged children for educational purposes rather than just storytelling, they can use a few more words. They can sometimes be as long as 1000 words. There is a bit more wiggle room with nonfiction picture books. One of my friends recently sold a picture book, and her editor said the deciding factor when it went to acquisitions was that it was under 500 words (barely!). So even though you grew up reading The Cat in the Hat (word count: 1621) and Curious George Gets a Medal (word count: 1807), or you read your own children Blueberries for Sal (word count: 1042) and Strega Nona (word count: 1253), your own thousand-plus-word manuscript might not sell.Ī strong place to debut right now in picture book is under 600 words. Current market trends are for shorter and shorter manuscripts, targeting younger readers. The most important numbers to look at with picture book length are for those stories that are selling right now. If you have a killer board book manuscript, it might be worth saving it to show your agent and editor after you sell a picture book. However, it’s a tough market to break into as an unknown author. 100 words is about the max for board books. Board books tend to have very low word counts, many under 50 words.
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