As a chronic under-writer (not to be confused with an ‘underwriter,’ which sounds much more complicated and outside the scope of my abilities) I’ve always struggled to hit word counts. From 500 word essays in school to NaNoWriMo’s famous 50k finish line to the industry standard of 70k I always fall short. As a result, I’m constantly on the lookout for shortcuts (longcuts?) to stretch my stories without being accused of fluff.
Here we are, dear readers, at the thrilling culmination of our weeks of research and curiosity. Today we uncover the most sacred of knowledge- how long should a cozy be?
For the most part, I hear that contracts for cozies want you to write between 75,000 and 95,000 words, as I’ve said before. But that’s too easy, so today I’m going to count the pages on all 17 books we’ve been using, and pick a random page for a word count. Because I am just that dedicated. Some of these books have tidbits at the back, like recipes or hints for their respective settings. If they’ve got pages numbers, I’m going to include them:
Bess Carnan 