It’s an incredibly common question, asked by self-publishing and querying authors alike. How short is too short? How long is too long? It likely won’t surprise you that neither I nor anyone else can tell you exactly how long a book should be.
How about a ballpark number, then?
While no one can tell you how long your book should be, in general:
Short stories tend to be between 1,000 and 10,000 words. This gives you room to develop a contained story, but not to explore much beyond. Short stories must be carefully structured and self-contained, giving the reader everything they need but not a lot more.
Novellas tend to be between 10,000 and 50,000 words. You can build a more complex plot than you would in a short story, but it must still be small-scale. You aren’t exploring a whole world in a novella, just a small corner of one.
Novels could technically be anywhere upwards of 50,000 words. Most published novels are between 80,000 and 110,000 words, so if you’re a first-time querying author, that’s a good length to aim for.
It’s important to note that acquiring editors may have word counts in their submission guidelines. Always, always read and follow submission guidelines before submitting a manuscript. If an editor’s submission guidelines say that they want books between 70,000 and 100,000 words, your 120,000-word manuscript will not get read, but will be thrown out for not following the guidelines. Acquisition editors are busy people; unlike in Pirates of the Caribbean, these guidelines are actually rules.
Different genres tend to be different lengths.
Some genres have more specific guidelines for word count than others.
Mystery novels, for example, shouldn’t be too long if you don’t want to lose your readers, and Masterclass recommends 70,000–90,000 words to properly develop your plot while keeping your readers invested and engaged.
Romance novels tend to be similar—while you might find romance novellas (Tiffany Reisz has a few), you’re unlikely to pick up a romance novel that goes on for 800 pages. Romance novels should be quick, easy reads that don’t make readers wait too long for a satisfying and romantic ending. 70,000–90,000 is a good estimate for romance.
Historical fiction can get long; readers tend to be invested in a longer haul, and they want the historical background and worldbuilding in addition to a good plot. While shorter historical fiction novels exist, 90,000–130,000 is a good range for these books.
Nonfiction can range significantly. Memoirs tend to be shorter (80,000–90,000 words), while a book describing the rise and fall of the Roman Empire could easily be 200,000 words. This one just depends.
Literary fiction is a bit of a wild card. These books could include anything from novellas to door-stopping bricks. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman clocked in at 426,100 words in a single stream-of-consciousness sentence. I’m not going to even try to give a ballpark number on lit fic.
What about fantasy?
Fantasy is hard to give an estimate for because it varies a lot. Some fantasy books require building an entire new world for readers, while some use settings we’re already familiar with. Fantasy books are also more likely to be series, which means that the worldbuilding and overarching plot can stretch over a huge amount of pages while keeping individual books relatively short.
Series Books
Fantasy is certainly the genre where writers get to go all out. Anyone who has ever glimpsed the A Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin knows that putting books in a series doesn’t mean they have to be short. The longest book in the series, A Storm of Swords, is a whopping 424,000 words long.
For most fantasy series writers, 100,000–120,000 words per book is a good base range. Samantha Shannon’s The Bone Season, the first book in a septology, is about 130,000 words and feels like an easy, digestible length for a book in a series.
Standalones
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
Samantha Shannon’s fairly average length for her Bone Season books does not reflect her standalone book length. The Priory of the Orange Tree is 225,000 words long, and according to Shannon’s social media, the next book in the Priory world (still a standalone, because each book is self-contained) is even longer, with a first draft total of 343,000 words.
The Priory of the Orange Tree is a book that needs to be as long as it is. Shannon builds a whole world for her readers with multiple continents and cultures, a rich history, and a complex magic system with roots going back a thousand years. When I turned the final page, I felt that I could easily have read another 800 pages of Priory.
Naomi Novik takes a different approach. Uprooted, her first standalone novel, is 154,000 words—slightly longer than the average book, but not by much. Spinning Silver is 156,000, so, pretty consistent.
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Your ideal book length depends on your book, not the average.
While Samantha Shannon embraced the epically long standalone for Priory, and the choice paid off. Shannon’s $40 brick of a book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, evidence that veering from the average is not necessarily a bad thing. (It’s worth noting that Shannon already had a substantial following from The Bones Season series. Pitching a 200,000-word book as a debut author is going to be a much harder sell.)
Naomi Novik played it safer with her book length, and while I adore both Uprooted and Spinning Silver (seriously, go read them; I’ll wait), I think Uprooted could easily have been twice as long. Uprooted has a huge amount of location changes and plot twists for a 464-page book, with major plot events arising and resolving in the space of a chapter or two.
Novik somehow manages to develop her world and characters and plot arcs without the story feeling rushed, but stretching out this story over another 20,000 words or so would have allowed her to develop more convincing relationships and savour important plot points instead of jumping from one to the next.
Spinning Silver does a better job, in my opinion. There’s less back-and-forth between plot points, and the story feels like it is carefully organised into sections that clearly build on each other. The whole story ties together deliciously without rushing, and the book is, for me, exactly the right length for the tale Novik spun.
Make your book length fit your story, not the other way around.
Working with a developmental editor is a great way to figure out how long your book should be based on your particular story, not based on what a website says about average book length. A trained editor can help find places where your story needs to be expanded or condensed.
If you do need to shorten a manuscript's length to fit a required word count, hiring an editor to look at your manuscript with fresh eyes is a great way to get there.
Whether you’re readying a manuscript for submission or want it to be the best it can be before self-publishing, Rookwood Editing is here to help. Get in touch today!
Molly Rookwood is an editor, reader, tea drinker, and cat mum in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She loves Jane Austen and epic fantasy, and her bookshelves are forever overburdened. When she’s not playing D&D or taking turns about the room, she can be reached at molly@rookwoodediting.com or by following @RookwoodEditing on Twitter.
