Length of Children's Books
I have just completed my first manuscript for a children's book. It is a long traditional bedtime story to be read over several days or weeks even! I don't really understand why I must limit the number of words. Please can anyone advise? Many thanks.
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I've bought a few books for young cousins that are collections of stories to be read around the year... or simply anthologies of stories under a certain theme (princesses, giants, whatever). Parents like it because one book will work for many nights and many stories.
My suggestion is to present your objective for the story in the title, eg. The 1001 nights bedtime story.
Then clearly state that each chapter is for one night (and give it an ending that isn't a real cliffhanger - no one is going to leave the chapter for the next day if it's a real cliffhanger). You could have an entire page in between chapters with a picture of what happened in the chapter that has just ended to add a physical barried in between chapters.
Another way to make it work would be if each chapter is a one-day adventure, so you could tell the child this is what happened to [protagonist] today. I can't wait to see what will happen tomorrow, can you? Well, we won't know till tomorrow night.
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Because bedtime stories are about getting children to fall asleep and no parent wants to be reading until 3am.
Publishers impose word restrictions for two basic reasons.
A new author represents are risk. Bigger books cost more to produce, so the risk is higher. Restricting word count reduces the risk of taking on a new author.
There is a limit to how long (or short) of a book a reader is willing to buy on particular subjects. Publishers know this. (It is their business to know.) They won't publish things that are too short or too long to sell. They will publish things are in the sweet spot of length for a particular genre. (And if you go through a bookstore you will see that there is considerable uniformity in the length of most books in each section.)
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