There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to word counts, and different sources are going to tell you different things. But it may indeed decrease your odds, especially for a debut. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova was a debut, as was Jonathan Livingston Seagull, published as a novella.Ī very short or very long word count is not going to kill your chances. David Foster Wallace was already a name before Infinite Jest.

Rowling started with two books of relatively conventional length before she had the latitude to start busting word count limits in the Harry Potter series. Most incredibly long and incredibly short books are not debuts. J.K.There are bestselling books like Infinite Jest that are incredibly long, and books like The Great Gatsbythat are pretty short. Readers expect a certain length of novel, and therefore agents and editors care in turn. A certain length of novel “feels” right to certain audiences, sort of like how the sweet spot for most movies is somewhere between one and a half to two and a half hours.

However, there are also genre conventions at play that influence even self-published books that aren’t likely to be sold on a shelf. A book that is too short can literally be too short to have its spine out, and a book that is too long will crowd out others on the shelf, in addition to costing more coming and going due to printing and distribution costs. In part this is a literal physical constraint owing to the fact that paper books are a) still placed on shelves and b) often placed spine out. The thing that matters most? A great story. Word count matters, but it doesn’t matter endlessly. Yes, you should go through the novel revision checklist and take out anything extraneous no matter what.īut at the end of the day, you have to write the novel you want to write. Yes, having a book that is overly short or overly long for its genre will incrementally decrease your odds of finding traditional publication.

The word counts of some famous novels for comparisonīut before I do that, let me just say this: don’t overthink it.

Standard word count ranges for various genres.

Few elements of the book-writing process inspire such hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing as trying to constrain your novel within certain seemingly arbitrary bounds.

Submissions word count tor books