What is a good length for a first novel?
Most publishers consider novel length as between 50,000 and 110,000 words. The average length is about 90,000 words. Big, epic stories can be 120,000+ words. If you are a first-time writer, aiming for around 90,000 words is a safe goal.
For most publishers, a book is “novel-length” when it's between 50,000 and 110,000 words. At a writers conference I recently attended, publishing veteran Jane Friedman said 80,000 words is good for most fiction, below 60,000 isn't novel length territory, and above 120,000 is likely too much.
A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers around 50,000-70,000 words. That said, if your book is around 40,000 words, you're in good company.
The general consensus, however, is that a novel should be at least 50,000 words long, is approximately 200 pages. This means that 200 pages is a sufficient length for a novel.
If the novel is under 40K-words, (and not in the middle grade or young adult market) then you likely have a novella. Novellas have always been harder to sell, as there are fewer markets for them, but in today's world of e-books, the novella has made a comeback.
How much can authors expect to earn from their books? A first-time author with a traditional publishing deal might expect an advance of $1,000-$10,000 and 5-18% royalties once they “earn out” their advance. Self-published authors do not receive advances, but their royalties can reach up to 70% for ebook editions.
In general, the Safe Zone for adult fiction is 70,000-100,000, and the Safe Zone for adult nonfiction is 60,000-90,000 words. Less than that and your book is probably too short.
Only one book (Order of the Phoenix) topped 200,000 words, but there were two books that came close with more than 190,000 words (Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows). When added all together, the Harry Potter books contain 1,084,170 words.
They are true masters at combining the five key elements that go into every great short story: character, setting, conflict, plot and theme. The ELLSA web-site uses one of these five key elements as the focus of each of the five on-line lessons in the Classics of American Literature section.
So 75,000 words is fine as a lower limit, but anything up to 120,000 words is unproblematic. Truth is, as long as you make sure every single word counts, you can go up to 135,000 words without troubling anyone.
How many chapters should a novel have?
However, there is no exact minimum or standard for how many chapters a novel should have. Because chapters are just places where the author decides to break up the flow of their story, you could go a more traditional route and end up with 12-28 chapters or choose to be more experimental and have as many as 200.
Many lesser known or unpublished writers who blog claim word counts anywhere in the range of 500 to 3000 words a day with 1000 being the average. A few writers claim to produce between 4000 and 10,000 words per day.
Light novels are usually shorter than regular novels and usually have less than 300 pages per volume, but there are exceptions to that. What makes light novels different from regular novels from Japan are the illustrations. A lot of light novels will have manga-like illustrations.
For many published authors I know, myself included, a completed novel takes them about 10, that's right, 10 drafts, and at least a year of real editing.
Novellas do well if they are part of a series, or if you write more books on what happens after the novella, but as a stand-alone, they don't sell super well. It also, of course, depends on the genre you write and how well you write, etc., but that's the basic consensus.
If you're writing your first novel, the general rule of thumb for novel writing is a word count in the 80,000 to 100,000 range. While anything over 40,000 words can fall into the novel category, 50,000 is considered the minimum novel length. Anything over 110,000 words is considered too long for a fiction novel.
A work of fiction between 20,000 and 49,999 words is considered a novella. Once a book hits the 50,000 word mark, it is generally considered a novel. (However, a standard novel is around 80,000 words, so books between 50,000 to 79,999 words may be called short novels.)
With strategic formatting, a print book can rightfully reach 100 pages—a slender volume for sure, but in this case, a shorter book may be exactly what's needed.
The bestselling book genre is romance and the most profitable fiction book genre. Religious & inspirational books are the most popular non-fiction genre, whilst thrillers are the most popular audiobooks.
The average traditionally published non-fiction book sells about 250-300 copies in the first year, but when we manage a book launch, our target is to sell 1,000 copies in the first 3 months.
How hard is it to get a novel published?
If you are an author, then you already know the answer to the question 'how hard is it to get a book published? '. The simple answer is; very difficult. But the process can be made easier when you get a book published by a publisher like Austin Macauley.
Answer: the average reader takes about 13.9 hours to read 500 pages. You might take more or less time than 13.9 hours to read 500 pages, depending on your reading speed and the difficulty of your text. The average person's reading speed is around 300 words per minute (WPM).
Avid readers are the type who can read roughly a book a week. It's easy to imagine these super readers as being speed readers. However, you can read 50 books per year even if you aren't particularly fast. It doesn't require a massive time commitment, either.
THE AVERAGE READER can read a book at 200 words per minute (WPM). That's about 4.5 hours to read a 200-page book (55,000 words). By increasing your reading speed to 600 words/ minute, you could read a 200-page book in 90 minutes.