YA novels – Author Bryna Butler

House of Gammen is finally here!

I’m sitting in my living room looking at the final paperback proof, and I can’t believe it. What a ride it’s been.

I started writing the Midnight Guardian story back in 2010. At the time, my hubby and I were building our house. I would work all day at the office. Come home and do a quick change. Head over to the construction site and paint or do whatever else needed to be done until late. Maybe grab a sandwich if I was lucky. Then when I finally got home, take a shower and plop on the floor and being writing this crazy story that somehow poured out of me at the most inconvenient time.

And I’m so glad it did.

Six books later, I’m so glad it did.

I hope you enjoy House of Gammen.

Beta readers were thrilled that I brought back so many favorite characters as we move forward to the Fall like the Werewolf Whisperer, Nana, Drew, Mikey, Katie, the shadows, Broo, and a couple of others that I don’t want to spoil. I couldn’t stand to wrap things up without them.

The paperback is the most beautiful I’ve published. It has some unique pages including a special Foreword to the MG fans with a beautiful sun and moon watermark. And the front cover, I can’t get over the haunting mogdoc green eyes.

Next week, I’ll post easter eggs for the last book, so be on the lookout for that post. Thank you to everyone who has supported me in this journey. You mean so much to me!

HOUSE OF GAMMEN
Read the exciting conclusion to the series that started with Of Sun & Moon, #1 Teen Supernatural Mystery, #1 Teen Romantic Mystery, #1 Time Travel on the US & UK Kindle Free Charts for January & February 2014.

With one friend trapped in time and the other chasing down a ghost, Keira Ryan must find it in herself to move past the damage caused by her misplaced trust and fulfill her destiny to bring forth the fall of the House of Gammen. Can she defeat the royal line before the gremlin-like creatures of Atlantis cross into our world?

All your favorite characters are back in House of Gammen, the perfect culmination of this teen, light fantasy series. Readers have fallen in love with the story based in magic, but set in the rural heartland of America.

I like numbers.

After all, I do pretend to be a banker from time to time. And what can be more banker-ish (that is so not a word, but should be) than my annual Do Word Counts Count? post. It’s an annual look at the word counts of bestselling teen books as well as a comparison between traditional and indie published word counts.

It’s the first question that most new authors ask, but there isn’t much out there on the topic. While there are no official ranges for fiction novels, there is an expectation.

To start, we take a look at bestselling authors. Below is the Barnes & Noble bestselling teen fiction list from earlier this month. Every book on it is traditionally published, which should give us an idea of strategy for the market makers.

Barnes & Noble Bestselling Teen Fiction 5/4/15
Novel	Page Count	Word Count*
The Heir by Kiera Cass	368	92,000
An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir	464	118,384
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard	400	100,000
Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen	432	108,000
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah Maas	432	108,000
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee	384	96,000
Paper Towns by John Green	336	84,000
After the End by Amy Plum	352	88,000
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart	240	60,000
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews	304	76,000

*Word counts are estimated based on the standard of 250 words per page

Weird random fact: The 1st place book in today’s 2015 list has the exact same number of pages as the 1st place in the 2013 list (The Fault in Our Stars).

Last year’s B&N Teen Bestseller word counts averaged 88,875 words. This year’s average is 93,038.

To get an idea of word count average for indie authors, below are the current bestselling books from Smashwords, a leading distributor of indie novels. As you will see, these are significantly lower word counts than their B&N counterparts.

Smashwords Young Adult/Teen Bestsellers 5/4/15
Novel	Words
His Bad Boy Ways by Faye Aden	55,850
Flit by Abieth Winter	78,810
Wisdom by Amanda Hocking	91,079
Torn by Ashley Stambaugh	83,040
Newborn by Joshua Dee Preece	19,670
Undeniably Chosen by Shelly Crane	152,550
Crutch by Alex Rushmur	2,600
Bloodline by Kei	9,950
Masked SheWolf by Yara Gharios	108,550
Rise of the Valiant by Morgan Rice	81,050

Last year’s Smashwords list included a novella, so I think it’s interesting to note that this year’s list contains two: Newborn and Bloodline.

Average word count for books distributed through Smashwords is 68,314, well under the 93K plus we saw from the B&N bestsellers. Not surprising. The last two years have demonstrated the same as traditionally published works on average tend to be longer than indie published work (though there are exceptions).

As a writer, I typically hear 55k-80k is the way to go for a Young Adult novel. I used to hear that a debut author should never go over 100k as publisher’s, tight with their dollars, often find it hard to justify printing that many pages on an unknown. These numbers seem to reinforce those mindsets with a decreasing average word count every year.

Here’s the comparison over the last few years that I’ve been doing this post.

Bottom line: Keep it short and sweet, kids.

Tag: YA novels

House of Gammen in Stores Now

House of Gammen is finally here!

Do Word Counts Count 2015