A typical novel runs between 70,000 and 100,000 words. That is the middle of the distribution, not a hard boundary: excellent novels exist at half that length and at twice it. But the middle of the distribution matters in practice, because it sets the expectations of everyone who will make decisions about your book: the agent skimming a query letter, the publisher calculating print costs, the editor quoting for the work, the reader judging the spine width in a bookshop.
So “how many words should a novel be” is really two questions. First: how many words does this text need to tell its story. Second: how many will the market accept from an author at this stage of their career. The answers can differ, and the craft lies in reconciling them.
How manuscript length is measured
Word count is the standard measure across the English-language publishing world. Agents ask for it in the query letter, submission guidelines specify it, and it is the first number a publisher looks at. Page counts are secondary and ambiguous, since they depend on font and formatting; where they appear, the working convention is that one manuscript page equals roughly 250 words.
A few reference points to keep the numbers intuitive:
| Measure | Typical novel | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Words | 70,000 to 100,000 | the number agents and publishers ask for |
| Manuscript pages | 280 to 400 | at ~250 words per page |
| Printed pages | 300 to 450 | depending on typesetting |
| Reading time | 5 to 8 hours | at average reading speed |
Every writing tool counts words for you; the number to quote in a query is the total for the full manuscript, rounded to the nearest thousand.
How many words per genre
Genre norms grow out of reader expectations and print economics. These are the ranges most published titles fall into:
| Genre | Words |
|---|---|
| Crime, thriller | 70,000 to 100,000 |
| Romance, contemporary | 60,000 to 90,000 |
| Fantasy, science fiction | 90,000 to 130,000 |
| Young adult | 50,000 to 80,000 |
| Literary fiction | 60,000 to 100,000 |
| Horror | 70,000 to 100,000 |
| Historical fiction | 90,000 to 130,000 |
| Novella | 20,000 to 50,000 |
Two genres have a justified upward drift. Fantasy and historical fiction carry the cost of worldbuilding: the reader has to learn the rules, geography and history of a place that does not exist or existed long ago, and that takes pages. We cover this in our guide to building fictional worlds. At the other end, romance and young adult reward economy, because their readers read a lot and fast, and the publishing rhythm of a series favours shorter volumes.
It is also worth knowing what the ranges do not say. They do not say a 105,000-word manuscript gets auto-rejected. They say that the further from the middle, the more the book has to prove: every page above the norm is extra paper, printing and editorial cost that a publisher will absorb only if they judge the text earns it.
How many words should a debut be
Fewer than ambition suggests. A debut author has no readers yet who will buy a thick book sight unseen, and a publisher is pricing risk: a 150,000-word novel from an unknown name is a more expensive bet than a taut 85,000. That makes the safe zone for a debut in most genres 70,000 to 100,000 words, stretching to about 120,000 in fantasy.
There is a second, less commercial reason. First novels are almost always too long not because the story is big, but because the draft contains things the author needed and the reader does not: warm-up openings to chapters, scenes that repeat information, description written for the pleasure of describing. The list of usual suspects overlaps with what we collected in common mistakes of beginning writers. Self-editing typically slims a first draft by 10 to 20 percent, and that margin is worth planning for: if you are aiming at 90,000 words after edits, a 100,000-word draft is exactly on target.
Too short or too long: what to do about it
The raw word count diagnoses nothing. Only set against the story does it tell you where to look.
A text that runs clearly short (say 40,000 words where the genre expects 80,000) is almost never a style problem and almost always a construction problem: not enough happens. The plot runs down its main track with no subplots, the secondary characters have no goals of their own, the world ends at the stage set. The fix is not to inflate descriptions but to go back to novel structure: add complications, deepen the antagonist, give the supporting cast agendas that collide with the main one.
A text that runs clearly long has two typical causes, each visible in a different place. The first is redundancy at scene level: the same information delivered several times, scenes duplicating each other’s function, threads leading nowhere. That is treated at outline level, by cutting whole units. The second is bagginess at sentence level: filters, padding, ornament. For a systematic pass through both levels, see our guide on how to edit a novel.
The best test for both cases is the same: chapter by chapter, ask what this unit changes in the story. A chapter that changes nothing is a candidate for cutting no matter how well it is written. We describe that test at more length in the piece on pacing in a novel, because length and pace are two sides of the same coin: a book is rarely “too long” evenly. It has specific stretches where the rate of change drops to zero.
Vellam counts length chapter by chapter and analyses each one for what it contributes to the story, so instead of a vague “probably too long” you get a map: which chapters carry the plot and which stand still. You can look at sample analyses run on excerpts from a real novel.
Frequently asked questions
How many words is the average novel?
Between 70,000 and 100,000 words, which is roughly 280 to 400 manuscript pages at 250 words per page. Fantasy and historical fiction tend to run longer (up to about 130,000 words), romance and young adult shorter (from about 50,000).
How many words should a debut novel be?
The safe range for a debut is 70,000 to 100,000 words, up to about 120,000 in fantasy. A longer text from an unknown author means higher cost and higher risk for the publisher, so it has to be visibly better to compensate. Plan for self-editing to trim a first draft by 10 to 20 percent.
Is 40,000 words a novel?
Borderline. Texts of roughly 20,000 to 50,000 words are classed as novellas; most publishers and prizes treat the novel as starting somewhere around 50,000 to 60,000 words. The shorter form is not lesser, but it is harder to sell as a standalone printed book.
How is a manuscript’s length measured for submissions?
In words, for the complete manuscript, rounded to the nearest thousand; this is the figure that belongs in a query letter. Page counts are secondary and assume roughly 250 words per manuscript page. Counting per chapter is also worth doing: a single chapter twice the length of its neighbours is a frequent sign of a construction problem.
What if my novel is too long for its genre?
Cut at two levels, in order. First the outline level: scenes that repeat information, threads that lead nowhere, chapters that change nothing in the story. Then the sentence level: filter words, padding, ornament. Self-editing typically removes 10 to 20 percent of a first draft without losing anything the reader would miss.