Classics include The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney. Less is more as the pictures do the talking. You will only have an approximate guide but at least you won’t be wildly off course. If it’s illustrated, adjust the word count by the percentage you feel the pictures take up. If they don’t specify a word count, and many don’t, take a look at some of their books in your local library and do a quick word count by counting three lines, dividing by three to get an average, multiplying by the number of lines on the page and then by the number of pages. Before submitting, make sure you check the publisher’s website. The reason there isn’t a definitive list is that publishers vary considerably in their requirements and so you will see that the range is large within each category. Following on from my blog post on which publishers are accepting unsolicited manuscripts for children, I thought I’d put together something else I had difficulty finding on the web – a guide to word counts.
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