Do You Want To Know Why Word Count Matters?

If you were writing your manuscript and I asked you exactly how long it would be, it’s unlikely you’d come back with an exact word count. It’s not one of those things most authors consider when starting to write their story: They just write. But word count controls a few factors when it comes to making your novel a printed reality.

The Right Fit: Why Word Count Matters

When it comes to word count, publishers have specific standards they prefer. Most publishing houses have guidelines, and if you don’t follow those at submission, they will overlook your novel, no matter how good it is. Especially if you’re a first-time author (established writers may receive some lenience with their subsequent stories.)

The reason for those standards boils down to one factor: Sales. Publishers aren’t pulling arbitrary numbers on a whim. No, from analyzing sales stats, they know what word counts are popular with audiences in a given genre.

And publishing houses generally prefer a sure bet when they hire a new author. If you self-publish, those limitations don’t apply, but it is crucial to consider the generally accepted standards, so you don’t alienate prospective readers.

How Many Words Does It Take?

Most word counts are genre and style dependent. Audiences expect a certain length from an epic fantasy, whereas reading a mystery of the same size isn’t as appealing. So whether you plan to self-publish or go with one of the big houses, it’s important to know what they expect when you’re starting to write.

Literary Novels

The accepted standard is between 80,000 to 90,000 words if you want eyes on your book (though some say you can even get away with up to 100,000 words as a first-time writer.) This count applies to most mainstream genres, like romance, mystery, horror, and historical fiction.

Anything longer is perceived as too long and will likely be too pricey to print, especially if there’s a chance it’ll fail (and as a first-time author, you don’t want to give them any reason to turn you down!)

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Once you start getting up to the 110,000-word count, your story becomes an epic or saga. Such counts are usually reserved for the science fiction and fantasy genre, where there’s expected room for world-building. You can write up to about 124,000, but that’s getting to be a bit much.

Just because your novel is an epic fantasy doesn’t mean you need to go nuts. If you can keep it to 110,000 or even a little shorter, you’re proving to prospective agents that you can show restraint and know how to self-edit.

Youth and Young Adult Novels

Things change when your audience isn’t in the adult age range, no matter what genre you write in. For novel readers around 12 or a bit younger, 20,000-50,000 is a decent range to keep them engaged. These novels tend to keep to simple themes, too.

Young Adult novels are when you can introduce more mature themes and stretch your word count up to 80,000. They say 55,000-79,000 is the sweet spot, though YA can be notoriously flexible when centered on fantasy or sci-fi. Still, don’t go overboard and showcase that you can edit your ideas.

Novellas and Novelette

Perhaps you don’t want to dive straight into publishing an entire novel. Thankfully, there is something beyond the short story that lets you flesh out a decent tale while not expecting you to write a massive amount. Novellas range from 10,000 to 40,000 words; the even shorter novelette is 7,500 to 17,000.

There are certainly more minute counts you can get into for a few other genres, but the above guidelines are great to consider as broad strokes. The point is to get your ideas out on paper, then whittle them down to match what is needed. You’re always allowed to play around and find some wiggle room, but you need to expect pushback from editors and agents if that’s the case.

When approaching publishing for the first time, you need to consider what works. What trends are defining the industry? Until you get established, you need to play by those rules. Book publishing is expensive, whether you’re doing it through a big company or independently, so you want to give yourself the best chance at success.

Word count is very easy to overlook in that equation. Still, if you’re conscious of it and look over your work critically on your own and with an editor, you’ll likely find what’s necessary and what can go for the sake of a tighter reading experience.

That way, literary agents or audiences will put more faith in your novel, giving you a better chance at writing your next story where you can bend the rules more. I learned a lot about the writing process when I was working on Getting By, and although I decided to publish independently, I didn’t go over the top with my word count since I was targeting the YA audience.

I hope this helped answered why word count matters! If you have any questions about the writing process and how you can manage your word count better, I share plenty of tips in my online course and via social media, so track me down for more.