Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Hey, do you guys know of any agents who auto reject based on stuff like word count? I'm also curious to find what count some agents will reject at, especially for something like young adult urban fantasy. I know some agents usually say 100K is usually the cut off. But then there are some that say 120K, 125 etc. There are so many YA UFs by debut authors out there with varying word counts too... Some are around 80K like Sarah Rees Brennan's Demon's Lexicon while others are higher like Cassandra Clare's debut City of Bones (130K). It's hard to tell which agents don't mind (as long as the count's not ridiculous) and which will toss out a query before reading the pitch based on the number. Though I'm pretty sure Nathan falls into the former category, right?

The only way to tell is if they blog or have given an interview and have stated their opinions. I don't really think there are many agents with insta-rejections based on any set criteria (provided it's in a genre they represent). But otherwise I wouldn't sweat it too much and just go ahead and query.

Thanks Nathan!

Yeah I think I'll just do that. You won't get anything if you don't at least try, right? I mean, I'm definitely not a lit diva who'd never dream of cutting one of her precious words. I cut over 31K words from my manuscript already through multiple revisions. But I feel like the only way I can get it down to something more acceptable like below 100K would be to tell the story I don't want to tell. I'd rather wait first and see if there's anyone that likes the story I do want to tell...and if not, well I'll try more revisions and keep working on that next manuscript :)