How Long Should a Book Be? Word Counts by Genre and Purpose
Written by ebookwriters.us Editorial Desk. Reviewed by Hannah Collins, Managing Editor. Published . 7 min read
How long should a book be? If it's an adult novel, you're usually looking at 70,000 to 100,000 words. Business and self-help books get away with a lot less; 45,000 is the target one well-known business-book editor gives these days. A tight ebook or lead magnet can be 15,000 words or under. So genre hands you a rough range. Where you land inside it depends on what the book is for, and on how much you've actually got to say (which is usually less than people hope, in our experience).
Why does book length matter before you write anything?
Because nearly everything downstream hangs off it. The schedule. The quote you'll get from an editor or a ghostwriter. How fat the paperback is, and so what you can charge for it. Even before anyone opens the thing, the thickness tells a reader what sort of book they're holding.
We see a lot of people leave the number until the end, after the draft has already wandered off in six directions. We'd do it the other way round. Pick a range while you're still outlining and the book has something to grow into.
How many words is a novel?
Per Reedsy, a standard novel is 70,000 to 100,000 words. Drop under 40,000 and you've usually got something other than a novel; from 17,500 to 40,000, Reedsy files it as a novella. Its editors break it down by genre like this:
- Fantasy and science fiction: 100,000 to 115,000 (the longest of the bunch)
- Mystery and thriller: 80,000 to 100,000
- Literary fiction, same again: 80,000 to 100,000
- Romance, also 80,000 to 100,000
- Horror: 70,000 to 100,000
- Young adult, a bit leaner at 55,000 to 80,000
- Middle grade: 20,000 to 55,000
- Picture books: just 400 to 800
First novel, and you're hoping to land an agent? Then we'd stay inside those numbers. Real published books drift around a fair bit, mind you. Reedsy dug into median word counts on its own marketplace, and literary fiction there in 2024 came out at 66,300. That's quite a bit under what its own editors tell people! Use the range as a landing zone, then, and if the story wants to run a bit over or under, let it.
How long should a nonfiction book be?
Shorter than most first-time authors expect, frankly. Josh Bernoff, who coaches and edits business writers, says business books ran 65,000 to 70,000 words twenty years ago. These days he aims for 45,000. Under 35,000, he reckons, readers won't really treat it as a book. And 25,000? He calls that a pamphlet, or a manifesto.
Memoir is allowed to stretch out more. Reedsy's editors put it at 80,000 to 90,000 words. Funny thing, though: the median memoir on Reedsy's marketplace in 2024 was 55,500 words. Plenty of memoirists stop well short and still end up with a proper book. General nonfiction, per Reedsy, sits at 50,000 to 80,000. Self-help is a free-for-all. Reedsy itself points to The War of Art at roughly 25,000 words and Sapiens at over 120,000, which tells you something.
Our own take, for what it's worth. Say you're a founder or a coach and the book is meant to bring in clients or get you on stages. Our pick there is 40,000 to 50,000 words. It's enough room to lay out your method, tell a few stories that earn their place and deal with whatever your clients always push back on. Much longer and you'll probably start saying things twice, unless there's a second big idea in there.
How long should an ebook or lead magnet be?
With an ebook there's no paper bill, so it can be exactly as long as the idea and no longer. Amazon even sorts short ebooks by reading time. Have a look at the Kindle Short Reads shelves sometime. The shortest is labelled 15 minutes (1 to 11 pages) and the longest is two hours or more (65 to 100 pages).
We think of a lead magnet as a little swap. A reader hands over an email address; you hand back one solved problem, ideally something they can get through in one sitting. We find that's usually a few thousand words, and once a draft creeps past 15,000 we start asking questions. If you're weighing the two formats, our piece on lead magnet ebook vs authority book goes into it.
Planning a paperback too? Then print limits apply. KDP needs at least 24 pages, and for a 6 x 9 book with black ink on white paper the maximum is 828.
How many pages is 50,000 words?
About 200 printed pages. Bernoff uses a quick formula for business books. Divide the words by 275. Then add something like 20 pages, since the title page, contents, acknowledgments and the rest of the front and back stuff take up room too. We ran a handful of totals through it:
- 30,000 words comes to about 130 pages
- 45,000 words, about 185
- 50,000 words, about 200
- 80,000 words, somewhere near 310
That assumes mostly text on a 6 x 9 page, which KDP says is the most common paperback trim size in the U.S. Throw in charts or photos, go up a font size or pick a smaller trim, and the page count climbs.
Ebooks are a different animal. Kindle text reflows to whatever screen and font size the reader has chosen, so an ebook "page count" is really a guess. We plan in words and let pages sort themselves out.
How do you choose the right length for your book?
Here's more or less how we scope a first book with a new client:
- Figure out what the book is for. Is it a lead magnet? A client-getter? A memoir for the grandkids, or a thriller aimed at people who read three a month? Answer that first. It narrows the range more than genre ever will.
- Pull up five books like yours. Recent ones, from your Amazon category, the kind your reader might buy alongside yours. Every product page shows a print length, so jot them down. If they all hover around 200 pages and you're planning 400, readers are going to feel like they've been handed homework.
- Do some chapter math. We like to sketch the chapters on one sheet and scribble a word budget next to each; ten of them at 4,500 apiece and you're at 45,000. If you can't find enough to fill one of them at the outline stage, it may really be part of another chapter.
- Go with a range, say 42,000 to 48,000. Why not one number? Because people treat a single figure like a quota, and then they pad to hit it.
- Then look at budget and time. Every extra 10,000 words is more drafting and more editing, plus more interview hours if someone else is writing it for you.
There's a fuller walk-through of the outlining part in our nonfiction book outline template.
What if your book comes out too long or too short?
Bernoff doesn't mince words here: he thinks most business and how-to books run long. Every extra word costs money to edit, lay out and print, he notes, and pushes up the price on the cover. If that's you, cut the repetition first. After that, hunt for material that would live better elsewhere, maybe as a bonus download, an online appendix or the seed of your next book.
Running short is easier to fix, provided something is really missing. Ask yourself what a reader still needs once they finish the last chapter. Maybe it's a worked example, or a chapter on the usual mistakes, or one on what happens after they put your idea to work. Any of those tends to add more than padding out what's already there. And if nothing's missing? Fine. Leave it short, put it out as an ebook and price it accordingly.
How does length change the cost of a ghostwritten book?
Pretty directly. We quote on scope, and length is the largest part of scope. Each of our packages has a word count baked in, and here's how they stack up:
- Starter: up to 15,000 words, from $699, roughly 3 weeks
- Professional covers up to 30,000 words, from $1,499, around 5 weeks
- Premium goes to 50,000 words, from $2,499, about 8 weeks
- Elite, up to 100,000 words, from $3,999, up to 12 weeks
Which means "how long?" is a budget question too. Somebody after a 45,000-word business book and somebody after a 15,000-word guide are buying very different things, on very different calendars. If you want the wider market picture, we've written about how long it takes to ghostwrite a book and how much an ebook ghostwriter costs.
Know what the book needs to do but still fuzzy on length? That's a perfectly normal spot to be in. Our ebook ghostwriting services start with scope: length, audience and the job the book has to do. One of our ebook writers can suggest a length and then stay on as your ghost writer to get the thing written.
FAQ
Is 30,000 words long enough for a book?
For a focused nonfiction book or an ebook, sure. Using Bernoff's formula that's around 130 printed pages. For an adult novel it's on the thin side, though, since Reedsy puts the usual cutoff for a novel at 40,000.
How many pages is 50,000 words?
Around 200 for a 6 x 9 paperback that's mostly words. You get there with Bernoff's math: 50,000 divided by 275 comes to about 182, and you add 20 or so for front and back matter.
Should I count words or pages while writing?
Words. Always words. Change the font and your page count jumps all over the place, while the word count doesn't budge, which is basically Bernoff's whole argument for tracking it. Trim size and layout get picked at the very end anyway.
Not sure what length your book needs?
Before chapter one, jot down what the book is for, look up five comparable titles and settle on a word range. Still stuck on the number? Tell us about your book. We'll reply within one working day, and if it looks like a fit we'll send a suggested length and a quote along with it.
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