How Many Words in a Novel?

How many words in a novel? Most adult novels run between 70,000 and 100,000 words, and 40,000 words is a common floor for calling a book a novel at all. Genre moves the target: young adult usually sits lower, while fantasy and science fiction run higher.

These numbers are market conventions, not rules. They tell you what an agent, editor, or reader in your genre expects to hold, and they help you notice early if your story is heading far outside that range.

What counts as a novel by word count?

The line between short fiction and a novel is a convention, and one clear version comes from the Nebula Awards rules of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), which sort entries by length:

A 40,000-word manuscript qualifies as a novel under those rules, but it would be short for most adult commercial fiction. Publishers, contests, and magazines set their own limits, and when you submit, theirs is the number that counts. If your idea fits comfortably under 17,500 words, you are probably writing short fiction, which has its own markets and limits.

Average novel word count by genre

Genre is the biggest single factor in novel length, because each genre carries its own reader expectations. Reedsy's word count guide puts the typical novel at 70,000 to 100,000 words and breaks it down like this:

Writer's Digest's definitive word count post lands in the same place. For adult fiction it names 80,000 to 89,999 words as the range to aim for. It calls 100,000 to 115,000 excellent for science fiction and fantasy and 55,000 to 79,999 a great range for young adult. It puts westerns lower, at 50,000 to 80,000.

Two things to keep in mind when you read these tables:

• They describe traditional publishing in English. Agents and editors weigh length partly because, as Writer's Digest notes, a book past 100,000 words is more expensive to produce. Self-published and serialized fiction has more freedom, though readers still notice padding.
• They matter most for a first book. Writer's Digest marks 110,000 words and up as too long for adult fiction and says its guidance is especially useful for debut and early-career authors. Established authors get room that a debut usually does not.

Subgenres stretch these numbers. If you are writing at the long end of fantasy, the guide to how to write epic fantasy covers what that length has to carry. For teen readers, see how to write young adult.

How many pages is a novel?

Page count depends on format, so writers and agents talk in words. A double-spaced manuscript page in 12-point type holds roughly 250 words. A printed paperback page usually holds more, commonly cited as about 250 to 300 words, depending on trim size, font, and margins.

The page count in your word processor is the least reliable number of all. Change the font size or line spacing and the document gains or loses dozens of pages without a single new sentence. Use the word count.

How to plan your novel's word count

A word count is a result of the story's structure, not a goal you set first and fill. A more reliable estimate is built from the bottom up:

1. Estimate your scenes or chapters. If you have an outline, count them. If you don't, list the major turning points and how many chapters you expect between them. The guide on how to outline a novel helps if this step is still blank.
2. Measure what you have already written. Average the length of your first few chapters. Your own number beats any industry average.
3. Multiply. Thirty chapters at 2,500 words give 75,000 words. Forty give 100,000.
4. Compare the result with your genre's range. If it falls far outside, look at the story, not the counter.
5. Turn the remainder into a routine. Divide the words still to write by the days you plan to write, and you have a daily target.

Count only the manuscript. Character notes, research, and scene summaries make the file bigger but are not part of the novel's length.

What to do if your novel is too short or too long

A total far outside the range is usually a symptom of the story, not of the prose.

• Too short: You are usually missing events, not adjectives. Check whether the antagonist pursues a goal of their own, whether a subplot runs alongside the main line, and whether the protagonist pays a price for their choices.
• Too long: Don't trim a little from every page. Look for whole scenes that change nothing and chapters that repeat what the reader already knows.
• Far too long: Ask whether it is two stories. A draft at double its genre's range sometimes splits better into two books.

When the first draft is done, cutting and adding scenes belongs to revision. The guide on how to revise a novel starts with structure, which is where length problems get fixed.

How Writer Studio helps

Writer Studio counts words as you write, so you don't need a separate spreadsheet. The Explorer shows a word count for every item in the manuscript tree, as described in Structure. You see the book's total and also where it is unevenly spread, such as one chapter twice the length of its neighbors.

You can set a book goal, a target total word count for the whole manuscript, and a chapter target, the intended size of a chapter, so every chapter shows how full it is against that size. Going over a target is not an error. The Statistics panel shows the book's total words, active days, and your averages. Notes and synopsis text never count toward the book total, because they are not the manuscript. Writing goals and statistics explains each goal; none of them blocks writing or interrupts you.

Download Writer Studio and track your novel's length chapter by chapter

Writer Studio is in alpha; features and interface are still changing.

Your next step

Open your draft, count the chapters you expect to write, and multiply by your real average chapter length. Compare that with your genre's range and decide whether the story needs more events or fewer scenes. For more on getting a first draft to the finish, browse Working on the Manuscript.