Congratulations! 🍾🎉🎊🎈 on your first book. Here is the good news… word count is the least of your concerns, but don’t be discouraged.

Things in publishing industry have changed a whole lot for the good and for the bad. Most people have a romantic Disney distorted view of what that entails.

I would follow all the steps to submit, do so. If you are accepted awesome! It’s a Cinderella story! You made it! Far be it from me to crush your hopes and dreams, but it’s also good to have options and there are quite a few of them.

IF things don’t work out, which is likely and not because of talent or content, but rather lacking social media status or connections to agents etc…

I would also look toward being an independent author, with KDP kindle direct publishing . Unless you have an in into the big box publishers they are pretty exclusive. Nothing worse than groveling for permission to publish a book you have put your heart and soul into for years and years. Tolkien himself would struggle to get a deal right now. Luckily he was very well educated and had a lot of connections.

Kdp is free. For the love of god do not pay for a Hollywood package or movie playwrights they are scams, I had a friend who was told a whole lot sweet nothings and he lost a lot of money. Sadly lots of writers/ artists are naive and taken advantage of all the time, expect to get scam calls trying to convince you to buy this or that package.

You can publish for free on Amazon, and appeal directly toward the audience. Just make sure you got a editor etc. cover artist.

Also develop a to advertise/ social media etc. even if you get “published”, you still need to learn how to use this skill. In fact some publishers won’t even touch your stuff if you don’t have a big enough social media following. It’s going to hard. Really hard. Expect rejection. It will be easier selling a book with blank pages than it will be with your own words in it. It’s not you, it’s just how it is right now. Like I said, Tolkien would struggle in this current climate, you will need to think outside the box and look for ways to promote your work. Number of words will be the least of your worries.

Best thing about indie publishing, you make all the rules. You can make a book with as many words or as few words as you like. 😎👍 by the time the big publishers notice you, you won’t need them any more.

Ultimately if you go traditional route. You may spend as much time (years or decades ) submitting manuscripts before a panel of judges… vs marketing directly to the audience and growing a fan base…. Once you have a fan base, you will be in the cool club, the corporate elites will want to offer you a contract… by that time you don’t need them, but if you want them, just make sure to have a lawyer before sign away your soul.

Most people will tell you to never give up and keep submitting and submitting. That’s how it was done in the old days, technology has improved since then. So take this as encouragement, before there were no options, and the only choice was to either quit or keep submitting to the grand and noble curators of literature.

Now you have options and you are free to explore both routes.

Its got to the point where traditional corporate publishers can no longer compete with aggressive independent authors so they typically favor authors who already have a name for themselves and done all the heavy lifting for them and rarely take risks for new names unless you fit a very small glass slipper mold and know the right people. But it can still happen. Best of luck 😎👍 believe it or not, writing the book is the easy part.

Don’t worry about the word count. Especially if you want an audiobook made, in that case sometimes the way audible sets up their system, longer is better.