Average length of a fiction book

However part why the new writers, the answer is difficult to identify because the answer is so difficult. And for every book that sells 20,000, there is one that is a disaster. So that usually includes everything from chapter books, to middle grade, to young adult novels. So 50,000 words is the minimum for a nonfiction book. But, most nonfiction publishers want to be sold the concept, and therefore be able to discuss the direction of the project, before you write the book. Some will tell you 2,500 words is the average, while others will say that 3,000 to 5,000 word chapters are more likely to be the norm.

I heard 10,000 words can be accepted as an ebook at a short length at least for nonfiction. A scene that takes place in ten or fewer pages can comfortably be considered short. Everything you need to know about word count and book length for. The length can vary greatly between genres, though. The average length of the novels we publish varies, but is almost never fewer than 80,000 words. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. The average income from a published book bizfluent. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. At the other end of the spectrum a book of 80,000 to 100,000 words has significant heft, 320400 pages. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words.

Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. The figure was found through looking at a number of books text stats, until brave new worlds 64,531 word count landed in the exact center of all books50% of books have fewer words and 50% of books have more words. The science fiction and fantasy writers of america specifies word lengths for each category of its nebula award categories. A nonfiction book attractive to publishers of bestsellers starts at around 75,000 words. Using this exercise, you should end up with a good idea of book length expectations for a novel like yours. In this article im going to attempt to answer that question. One of my biggest problems as a publisher is having authors deliver more than was agreed to. A good way to gauge appropriate length is to check out similar books for comparison.

The average adult novel runs approximately 100,000 words while those in other categories run 80120,000 words. Science fiction and fantasy are the big exceptions because these categories tend to run long. I dont know what i can say to add to what has already been said. The graph shows the average length of the top 100 bestsellers in each of the 30 main amazon kindle categories, measured in terms of the number of pages. I know of an author with a very large publisher whose novel has sold only 1,087 copies in its lifetime.

Classification of fiction by length school for champions. Know your content, know your mainline pitch and some. Be aware that the word average means that for every book that sells 15,000, there is one that sells 5,000. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. But i dont like to do things halfheartedly, so here is the bigger picture of length in fiction a novel is anything over 50,000 words. If you have written a nonfiction book and want to know if you are hitting. At a writers conference i recently attended, publishing veteran jane friedman said 80,000 words is good for most fiction, below 60,000 isnt novel length territory, and above 120,000 is likely too much. Add screenshots or other graphics and youve got a nicesized ebook. I dont know if the question is meant as a mentalstatistical exorcise. As with everything else when it comes to writing a book, these are only guidelinesnot rules. In the days of the typewriter, a doublespaced page with 1inch margins would hold an average of 250. However sometimes, like today, the reverse happens. Urban fiction publishing requirements urban fiction news. Because yes, different types of books require different book lengths.

Again, higher word counts usually mean that the writer does not. Onethird of the novels that come into the agency are rejected because theyre too long or short, perkins says. The skys the limit for the maximum length, though anything over 250,000 is getting into war and peace territory. You can use comparable, successful books as models to determine the length you book should be. Smiley lists novels as typically being between 100,000 and 175,000 words, 3 while national novel writing month requires its novels to be at least 50,000 words. That said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally lies between 100,000 and 115,000. First time authors should steer clear of writing anything over 80,000 words. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. Until an author sells 5,000 copies of his book, he makes more from royalties than he will with a selfpublished book, according to authors. A good example of this is the click moment, by frans johansson, an excellent book on the influence of randomness in determining success. Book length average length of a non fiction book one of the questions that new writers always ask is how long should my nonfiction book be. Thanks morriss003, thats the kind of information i needed to know.

But i also know of others who have sold over 500,000 copies. For childrens fiction, the general rule is the younger the audience the shorter the book, and for ya novels the average is 50,00070,000 words. That would be the length of a novella in mainstream fiction. Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story. Within the publishing industry we tend to talk about the length of a book in words rather than in pages.

So childrens book manuscript chapter length is a big question that ive received many times about all sorts of childrens books that have chapters. Classification by length includes shortshort stories, short stories and booklength stories. If the average length is 300 pages, youre looking at a 75,000 word manuscript approximately one reason its harder for a new author to sell a 140,000 word manuscript is the size of the book. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text.

I was curious to the public reaction to shorter novels as they are not physically picking up a printed book in a bookstore and can. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. T he indie author chris fox coined the term potato chip chapters for easilydigestible book chapters of a certain size. There are plenty of books that purposefully play with the word counts of their chapters. Before diving into the specifics of genrebased word counts, lets look at the broader picture of average book length. I get a lot of questions about word count for urban fiction novels. I guess 50,000 is a short novel and some early novels before goes as low as 40,000 which can be considered to be a novella. Most agree that under 1,000 words would be rather short and that over 5,000 might be rather too long. This is not an uncommon length in traditional publishing, especially in my observation for nonfiction books that are heavy on research.

As a general guideline, chapters should be between 3,000 to 5,000 words. However, many authors, frustrated with the low price of ebooks, have taken to writing ebooks that are between 40,000 and 50,000. But remember that too many short scenes in a row can make the flow of the plot feel choppy, and disrupt the continuity that john gardner said creates a dream for the. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. While many agents say they wont reject a book solely based on length, many also say they take word count into consideration. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. Novelist jane smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel. One of the questions that new writers always ask is how long should my nonfiction book be. Ive heard and read several reasons for this, including. Such books will have a minimum length of 75,000 words but seldom exceed. While average word length is 50,000 to 80,000 words, this genre has so much variety that word count depends on the book and its intended audience. Typically, a book that is published in paperback format at a length of 300400 pages will come in between 80,000 and 100,000 words. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages.