How Many Pages Make a Novel?

That question just arrived in my email, and it's a good one. The answer is: It depends.

Some publishers, especially in genres like romance, have requirements as uniform as a muffin tin: Each manuscript will be long enough to fill a book of exactly so many pages. Others are far more flexible.

In the days of the typewriter, a double-spaced page with 1-inch margins would hold an average of 250 words. So you could assume that since 4 pages = 1000 words, 240 pages = 60,000 words, which was the typical length for most mainstream and mystery novels.

Then came the personal computer and the writer's own choice of typeface and point size.

This threw the old estimate right out the window, but word processors of course give us a precise word count—and word count is what most publishers are interested in.

The number of words in a novel will vary depending on the genre. A young-adult novel will run between 20,000 and 40,000 words. That would be the length of a novella in mainstream fiction.

Many genres seem to have succumbed to supersizing. A mass-market western, mystery or SF novel used to run to 60,000-70,000 words. Now they're more likely to hit 90,000 words. Fantasy novels seem to be about 125,000 words—per volume, with some series going on and on. Mainstream fiction can be anywhere from 55,000 words (about the length of many mass-market romances) to ten times that.

And how many pages will your published book have? Again, book design and typesetting can influence the total. I've noticed a lot of hardback mainstream fiction lately with text that's really double-spaced, with generous margins: clearly the author handed in a short manuscript, and the publisher is trying to puff it up into something that looks worth the price.

Mass-market paperbacks don't seem to have changed their design much, however, and I've noticed that a typical page of a paperback novel will run around 440 words...not quite the equivalent of two double-spaced manuscript pages. My novel Eyas was just about exactly 500 pages long in manuscript, and came out in print at 354 pages.

If you're working in a genre like SF or romance, it's always a good idea to visit the websites of genre publishers to see what length they want. If you go to Harlequin and browse through their FAQs, you'll see that different romance series require much different lengths, from 50,000 words to twice that.

For you this is a craft, maybe even an art. For them, it's an assembly-line business. If you're J. K. Rowling or Stephen King, you can tell your publishers how long your next novel will be, and they will tug their corporate forelock, thank you very much, and plan accordingly. But lowly scribes like you and me are unlikely to enjoy such freedom.

Comments

[Hugh Howey]

Great article. I'm 65,000 words into my second book. My first one was 96,000 words long.

I remember when it felt impossible to write a single story that was comprised of so many sentences, but once you get in the flow, you start appreciated the opposite problem. Will 125,000 words be enough?!

[Hugh Howey]

Also, to back Laura up, I wrote my first rough draft in seven days. It had 80,000 words in it (which expanded to 96,000 during the first edit process). Overall, the book took around 100 hours to produce.

[courtney]

I m currently writing a narrative fiction book, and I am about 19,200 words in. Would a publisher be more likely to accept it if it were longer or shorter?

[Crof]

Hi--

At about 20,000 words, you've got a novella...not a novel. A publisher would expect 60,000 words for a novel in most genres. Maybe 20,000-40,000 for a young-adult novel.

[danny]

I'm currently writing a story (approximately 20,000 w0rds) documenting my own personal experiences as a migrant worker in the middle east. I have included labor injustice, love crimes, homosexuality and broken homes in my story the way I witnessed them. Do you think Reader's Digest will give it a try?

[Jason Nieto]

I have always thought about writing a novel, as my mind can be very graphic, but I never had the courage. Almost exactly one year ago today I began working on my first novel-it was my first attempt at writing anything really. I now have a 132000 word manuscript that I have edited twice now, and I am currently having some close friends read it. While I am anxious to get their feedback, they are not professionals. Do Agents tend to help you with the editing process, or should I hire an editor before sending it off to an agent? I have also heard that many publishers won't even look at your manuscript if it is over a certain length. As it was I had to hurry the ending a bit more than I had wanted to since I didn't quite have enough material for a full blown sequal, but it was already past the 130,000 mark. If givin the freedom I am sure it would have ended up somewhere in the neighborhood of 160,000. For those of you that have been published; is there any truth to this, or would I be better off extending the ending a bit?

[Essie]

i wrote a book that will be over 250,000 words when it can be cut off from the rest of what I have written. what would you say that is? Someone told me it was psycotic but Im interested in what it really is.

[Crawford Kilian]

Depending on the genre, Essie, you could have a single novel, a novel + sequel, or a trilogy.

[Melanie]

I am writing my first novel. I started about three weeks ago and I am over 50000 words into it. I am about one third of the way through the story. I was wondering if you thought that it sounded like I was on track or lagging behind. I only get to write late at night after the kids go to bed so I don't get to put as much time into it as I would like to.
So far it seems to be flowing pretty well and I am starting to get worried that I might not get it all into one book. Is that a coomon fear?

[melissa]

My daughter, has been working on writing a book and we are unsure what the lengh of this book should be, i have read all the q&a you have here, but am still confussed, so far she has 76,543 words and she is still writing.