How Many Words in a Novel? Word Count by Genre

The ranges most often quoted come from Writer’s Digest’s definitive post on word count by Chuck Sambuchino, written for authors sending a first book to literary agents. Pages are estimates for a typical paperback layout, before front and back matter.

The novella row comes from the award rules below, not from Writer’s Digest. Picture books are left out of the table: they are counted in pages, not words.

Two sets of award rules define the forms by length. SFWA’s Nebula Award rules and the Hugo Award categories draw the same lines:

• Short story: fewer than 7,500 words.
• Novelette: 7,500 to 17,499 words.
• Novella: 17,500 to 39,999 words.
• Novel: 40,000 words or more.

These are rules for science fiction and fantasy awards, but they are the clearest definitions there are, and they show why “how long is a novel” has two answers. A 45,000-word story is a novel under the award rules; an agent reading an adult debut of that length would call it short. Our article on how long a novella is covers the shorter forms.

For literary, mainstream, women’s fiction, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror, Writer’s Digest gives one range, 80,000 to 89,999words, as the one that won’t put off any agent. The total range it accepts runs from about 71,000 to 109,000:

The same post puts chick lit a little shorter, at 70,000 to 75,000 words. One reason it cites for the upper limit is cost: past 100,000 words a book is more expensive to produce.

These genres are the exception: world-building takes words. Writer’s Digest calls 100,000 to 115,000 an excellent range, with 90,000 to 100,000 and 115,000 to 124,000 probably all right too. A 110,000-word fantasy novel comes to about 355 pages at 6″ × 9″; at 5″ × 8″ the same text runs to about 416, so for a long book the trim size matters for the spine and the printing cost.

• Young adult: 55,000 to 79,999 words, and not much below about 47,000. Science fiction and fantasy for young adults can run longer, for the same reason as for adults.
• Middle grade: 20,000 to 55,000 words, depending on the age and the subject. Upper middle grade, for readers of about 12, is 40,000 to 55,000; a simpler middle-grade story, 20,000 to 35,000.
• Picture books: the standard is text for 32 pages, about 500 to 600 words; near 1,000 words, editors may shy away.

Memoir follows the novel: 80,000 to 89,999 words, with 70,000 to 79,999 not a problem and 99,999 as the high end. Westerns run shorter, anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000, with 65,000 a solid aim.

Divide the word count by the words on a page. With the typical layouts in our word count to pages calculator, a novel comes to:

These are pages of text before the front and back matter, at about 265, 290 and 310 words a page. Your font, spacing and margins can move them by about 12% either way, so count a full page of your own layout once you have one. Our guide to book sizes helps you pick the trim size.

Agents care about word count; KDP doesn’t ask for it. What it limits are pages, and only in print:

• Page counts. A paperback in the regular trim sizes can have 24 to 828 pages on white paper and up to 776 on cream; a hardcover, 75 to 550. At 6″ × 9″, 828 pages hold roughly 260,000 words.
• Spine text. KDP allows text on the spine only from 79 pages, about 20,935 words at 5″ × 8″.
• Too short. The Guide to Kindle Content Quality lists “content that is too short” as disappointing content, without a number.

Length also moves money. Above 110 pages, each page of a black-ink paperback adds to the printing cost — the KDP printing cost calculator shows how much — and in Kindle+ KDP pays per page read, so a full read of a long book earns more than one of a short book. The KENP calculator turns pages read into money.

Word counts come from the linked Writer’s Digest post, which gives advice for books sent to literary agents, and from the Nebula and Hugo Award rules; page limits from KDP Help, as of the date at the top. If a linked page now says otherwise, trust the linked page.