Many writers stress about word count while they are creating a book. My advice is actually not to worry about it during the first draft—just be true to your story and characters. Then, during the editing process, become the crazed axe murderer—okay, maybe more of a surgeon. But regardless, you need to be brutal.

In general, the count for most novels should fall between 80,000-100,000 words for almost any genre. Any debut novel over 100,000 words risks rejection from agents and publishers.  But again, don’t worry about this until you get there.  An interesting tidbit: the average length for all books on Amazon is 64,000 words.

One Step at a Time

General Word Count Lengths

What category does your manuscript fall into?  Here is a general guideline:

Micro-Fiction: Up to 100 words

Flash Fiction: 100-500 words

Short Story:  1,000-8,000 words

Novelette: 7,500-20,000

Novella: 20,000-40,000 words

Novel:  40,000-110,000 (see genre notes below)

Epic: 110,000+

The novel isn’t cut and dry. Each genre has its own average. For example, Science Fiction tends to be longer than a Western, and so on.

Book Lengths for Different Genres

Picture Books: 500-700 words (with an average length of 32 pages).

Middle Grade: 20,000-55,000

Upper Middle Grade:  40,000-60,000

Young Adult: 55,000-70,000

Mature Young Adult: 60,000-90,000
Note: The longer length must be warranted by the content.  It is best the keep novels in the 70,000-80,000 length.

New Adult: 70,000-100,000

Adult Fiction: 80,000-120,000

Memoir: 80,000-90,000

Western:  50,000-80,000

Sci-Fi and Fantasy:  100,000-115,000
This is due to the longer descriptions or world building. These books are generally 20,000 to 50,000 words longer than realistic novels.  Despite the accepted increase in length, they must be well-edited.

Women’s Fiction: 75,000-110,000
Some are longer than this, but if you are a first-time novelist, shoot for this range; otherwise, you risk the slush pile.

Word Counts for Famous Books

Brave New World: 64,531 words

City of Bones: 130,949 words

Divergent: 105,143

The Fellowship of the Ring: 187,790 words

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone:  77,325 words

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 198,227 words

The Hobbit: 95,356 words

The Hunger Games: 99,750

Lord of the Flies: 62,481 words

Madame Bovary: 117,963 words

Gone with the Wind: 418,053 words

Sense and Sensibility: 126,194 words

Twilight: 118,975 words

Ulysses: 262,869 words

War and Peace: 544,406 words (It really is one of the longest books ever!)

A Note on the Counts

Word counts may vary slightly because some include the foreword in the overall number. I used the Accelerated Reader site to look up all of the young adult titles.  It is super handy and FREE if you need to look something up.

Just click “teacher” or “librarian” so you can see all of the stats.  http://www.arbookfind.com/

No matter what you are writing, enjoy the process. Even if it’s only a haiku.

Sources:
Writer’s Digest, Huffington Post, Fiction Factor, Literary Rejections, and Literaticat Blog

Related Topics:
More Free Resources for Writers
Other Words for Whisper and Went Blog Post and printable PDF for personal use.
Writing: 8 or Eight? Rules of Using Numerals in Text
Books by Robin Woods

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