I recently fielded a question about word counts for books.

What's an OK word count for a middle grade book? Did I know of any websites that list ranges?

There are ranges posted all over the blogosphere. Most posts never disclose where the information or ranges come from, for starters. Which means, they usually boil down to someone's opinion, which I hate relying on.

I'll do you one better. It's a "hack" from my days as a teacher.

If you already have what the industry calls "comparables," in other words books that you think your book is like in tone, voice, theme, genre, or some other aspect, all you have to do is look them up in Accelerated Reader.

You don't have to have an AR account to look up books.

Search for the book by title, click on it, and you'll find the number of words listed, along with the number of pages. Then, there's no guessing. You know if your MS is in the ballpark or waaaay out there -- short or long.

If you're waaaay out there, rather than cross your fingers and hope someone will accept and love all those words, edit a few out. Or if you find yourself in the opposite situation, up in the stands with too few words, add some in (I'd love to have that problem!) to get within range of the books you want yours to be most like.

No guessing, no opinions.

Then you'll truly have a "comparable."

Here's an example of what an AR record for a book looks like: