Young Writers Society

I'm writing a fiction novel and I was wondering if there was a limit of words for novels... Well, is there? Thanks in advance!

Novels are typically around 100,000 words. It can go under or over a li'l depending on the genre and the age group it's aimed for.

Anything over 120,000 words is considered unsellable. (The exception being already well established authors - but you're not one of them.)

The minimum number of words it takes to have a true "novel" is 50,000 words. Anything under, and it's a novella.

Actually, many young adult novels are under 50,000 words. They may go as low as 40,000 words.

To be honest, there are no hard, definitive cut-off points on what constitute a novel. There's only what a publisher will and won't publish.

(Not to take anything away from Rosey - she's a very knowledgable writer, and she's completely correct on a semantic level: many people would not consider anything under 50,000 words to be a 'true' novel.)

YA/9-12s tend to be a completely different market, though, and are expected to be shorter. Because there is a perception that kids that age won't read as much (which, in most cases, is correct. Although Harry Potter and other doorstoppers popular on the younger end of the YA market has changed that significantly). Going after an older market has slightly different guidelines.

To summarize it all: it depends on what age you're going for, the genre, the publisher, and a whole host of other things. However, you've also got to consider the cost of printing, which is the main cost of a novel (paper is expensive).

The best thing to do is research your market, publishers, and check out the page/word lengths of other books published. Also, how many books the author has published to see what the starting point is.

But, for a first time author, don't go too high over the average for any given market. Printing books costs a publisher money, and they don't want to shell too much out up-front for an unknown author (any first time published author, unless they have a huge following online from self-published novels that have already proven successful).

Agreeing with Rosen and Sureal here. A lot depends on the genre, target audience, etc.

For instance, I write high/adult/mainstream/epic fantasy. That side of fantasy (not paranormal or urban) and sci-fi have higher word counts than any other genre, and because the readership likes its novels big and fat, publishers are a lot more willing to take on an author with a big fat book. Word counts of 100,000 upwards are still in the "sellable" range for a newbie.

And in some rare cases, they take on a newbie with a really, really big fat book. Patrick Rothfuss is the example for this. Other than a couple short stories, Rothfuss had no prior pub cred, but his debut novel was 250,000 words. That's massive. That's just shy of the length of the entire Hunger Games trilogy. His second book, the sequel, clocked in at about 400,000, which is one of the longest books every published.

They didn't let Tolkien publish The Lord of the Rings in one book like he wanted because of that. At around the size of 400,000, books get impossible to bind. And expensive, etc. All of The Lord of the Rings clocks in at 450,000, including the appendixes.

For almost any other genre, though, the norm is around 50,000-60,000. Shorter for Young Reader books. Teen fiction books are getting longer, but I believe even The Hunger Games books are under 100,000 apiece, and they're from an established, successful author.

That was basically just to elaborate some and give some examples and numbers. What it comes down to is what Rosen said above me. Research your genre. Find out what an acceptable word count is.

But most important, don't worry too much about word count. Write the novel to the length that it needs to be. Don't cut important stuff out, but don't have fluff in there either. A novel that's a nice 55,000 isn't going to be any good if everything's crammed in or if it's all Styrofoam peanuts.

I agree with most of what's been said. It can vary, depending on what it is, I guess, but there is a minimum and maximum for certain titles.

Well, I want to write for young adults, and right now part one of my novel is 170,000 words. I don't consider it unsellable, because Harry Potter is one of the biggest books I've ever read, and look how well that sells. They shouldn't cut kids short and tell them they can't read anything bigger than that. The Percy Jackson novels are also fairly big (especially the newest ones) so there are certainly exceptions and I don't think there's really a limit if you have a good story with an idea that will sell.

That's just my opinion though. You don't need to be a famous author to be happy. Well, unless becoming famous is your dream or something. It's not mine. There are lots of good books out there not everyone knows about.

Star- That is a good point, and that has made book publisher's limits for what is considered "sellable" to a kids market. But there is a factor of "the agent/publisher falls completely in love with it". As biased as this sounds, if a publisher totally falls in love with a story that story gets treated a lot nicer than the average. That's also really rare to happen.

Part of it is expectation, part of it is luck, and part of it is knowing the market. Somewhere in the range of those three is what the word count you'll be able to sell is.

Good luck on selling that novel, Star!

Only very well establish authors can sell novels that big, I'm afraid. As a first time author, 170,000 is completely unsellable - especially for the YA market.

Consider splitting it into several novels instead?

If you're worried about hitting a limit where agencies won't even look at your work, I say just write your book and edit it appropriately afterward to try and fit under that limit. You don't want to end up leaving important plot points out of your story just to appease these people.

But, if you do end up having difficulties finding an agency to represent your book for publishers, there are alternative solutions out there. One that my mom found for me was Trafford Publishing: http://www.trafford.com/

They have packages you can pay for in order to get your book published, as well as services to help you along the way like free consultation. I myself am looking at their Novo package for $600 for my book. When I spoke with one of their people she told me their word count limit was close to 200,000. Again, it's a lot of money to invest, especially since their more expensive packages range up to the thousands, even ten-thousands, but their cheaper ones are good for people who are just starting out.

You should definitely look for publishing agencies first and get your book published that way, but if you have a part-time job just put some money away each week to save for one of these packages incase you can't find one. It'll make your search less stressful knowing you have a back-up plan.

Don't go the vanity publishing route. It won't sell. Bookstores and the like won't stock the book, and the 'publisher' won't advertise your book.

No one will read your book except you and your family/friends. If you're fine with that, there's cheaper options - for example, http://www.lulu.com allows you to self publish books for FREE, and you'll likely sell more than if you go with a vanity publisher like Trafford, because Lulu place your book on their own online bookstore.

Vanity publishers often try to harass the author into buying an excessive number of their own book, even after charging ridiculous sums of money ($600 - seriously?) for the book to be 'published' in the first place. Usually the qualitiy of the prinitng is poor also.

Vanity publishers are essentially a scam, preying on the hopes and dreams of inexperienced writers. Avoid!

A real publisher will NEVER ask you to pay any money. The publisher pays the author, not the other way around.

EDIT: Check out Writer's Beware. Here's an article by them about vanity publishers: http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/vanity/

Thanks for the link. It definitely sounds like a better deal than the $600 one.

You also need to consider a normal publisher has a lot of time associated with it, and as far as your rights go there's not much you end up with. It's not worth it to me. I have too much of an attachment to all my novels, fiction or not, and there's no way I would sell myself short with normal publishing. But yes, vanity publishing is a very bad idea. That I know for sure.

That particular novel I most likely won't sell, and I think no one would be willing to publish it due to its size, but I wouldn't publish it normally in a million years because out of all my novels that's the one I have the biggest attachment to, and I would yell at the person that tried to get me to change it. But thanks for the encouraging words. The novel I'm working on now that has a great chance for me to at least look into publishing is only 50,000 currently, and I'm already passed the halfway point. I was thinking it was too short, but maybe I just have issues XD

And it's two novels as it is, and I'm not sure how I would cut them both up again. But, yes, if one day I decide I want to sell it (if ever) I'll probably cut it up some more. At least the second one. The first one might be alright with some editing.

Quick question related to publishing. I know that Amazon let's you do a Kindle eBook thing for free as long as they get some of the profit. Does that sound alright to do, or does that have problems involved?