How many words in a novel? The figures publishers set, by genre, and sixteen classics measured

The word counts publishers set, by genre

The publishers that post a length post a range, and the ranges run from 45,000 words for a short romance to 130,000 for science fiction and fantasy. Each figure below is the publisher's own, from its own submission page, read on 4 November 2026. Not every publisher posts one: DAW's imprint page has no length, and the figure quoted for it elsewhere comes from old copies of its guidelines.

Three details in those pages matter more than any single number. Harlequin gives one length for most series, not a range, and some lines put it in the description: Heartwarming describes itself as "wholesome, uplifting 70,000 word romances". Entangled's two young adult imprints prefer contemporary romance under 90,000 even though their stated ranges run higher. And Joffe Books sets a floor with no ceiling, while Bloodhound Books sets both, so a 100,000-word crime novel can go to Joffe but is 5,000 words over Bloodhound's maximum.

Pages close and open. Harlequin Historical is closed to submissions because the series ends in September 2027, and Love Inspired Trade, at 85,000 to 100,000 words, takes agented submissions only. Check the page itself on the day you submit: a figure quoted on a blog may be from a line that no longer exists.

Where a novel starts: the 40,000-word line

A novel is 40,000 words or more under the Hugo Awards' and the Nebula Awards' rules, which set the line in writing. The World Science Fiction Society's constitution, as of 7 October 2025, defines Best Novel as "a science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more" (section 3.3.1), and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association's Nebula rules, in force from the 2026 award year, use the same boundaries.

The Hugo line is softer than it looks. Section 3.2.10 lets the Worldcon committee move a story into a more appropriate category if its length is within 20% of the new category's limits, so a story of 32,000 words could be placed in Best Novel and one of 48,000 in Best Novella. Neither award says how the words are counted; the Nebula rules say only that a translated work is counted by its English word count.

No publisher in the table defines a novel by length, and these awards are for science fiction and fantasy, so 40,000 is a convention borrowed far beyond its genre. It is still the right line to use when the question is "is this a novel or a novella?". The 50,000-word figure many writers know was a target, not a definition: it was the goal of National Novel Writing Month, whose nonprofit organiser closed in 2025, as Publishers Weekly reported.

Why romance word counts disagree

Romance has two lengths because it is two markets: series romance with a set length per line, and single-title romance with a range. That is why the guides contradict each other. Reedsy's guide gives romance as 80,000 to 100,000 words and selfpublishing.com's as 70,000 to 90,000, and both are right only for single-title books. Neither range admits a single Harlequin Presents, Romance or Medical Romance book, all of which are 50,000 words on Harlequin's own page.

Series romance is sold by the line, each line with its own promise to the reader and its own length: 50,000 for Presents, 55,000 to 60,000 for Intrigue, 70,000 for Special Edition. Single-title romance is sold book by book, and the ranges open out: Entangled's Amara takes 70,000 to 120,000 words, and Afterglow by Harlequin asks for at least 75,000.

A worked example shows how narrow the series lengths are. A 62,000-word contemporary romance is:

• 12,000 words over Harlequin Presents and Romance (50,000);
• 2,000 words over Entangled Brazen, Indulgence and Lovestruck (60,000 at most);
• 8,000 words short of Harlequin Special Edition and Heartwarming (70,000);
• 8,000 words short of Entangled Amara's minimum (70,000).

So the book has to lose about 2,000 words or gain about 8,000 before it fits any of the contemporary romance lines in the table. A writer aiming at a series should choose the line first and write to its number.

Sixteen classic novels, measured

Sixteen well-known novels counted word by word run from 25,637 words to 318,259, and only five of them fall inside the 60,000-to-120,000 range most publishers post today. Each was counted from its Project Gutenberg plain-text file with Simple Online Counter's word counter rule, from the first sentence of the story to the last, with chapter headings left in and prefaces, illustration captions, the Gutenberg licence and publishers' advertisements taken out.

Three findings stand out. The Great Gatsby is 48,393 words: a novel, but under the 60,000-word floor Joffe Books and Bloodhound Books set, so a debut of the same length would be short for both. The Time Machine is 32,534 words, a novella by the award rules, yet over the 32,000 mark that Hugo section 3.2.10 would allow a committee to move into Best Novel. And five of the sixteen are over 150,000 words, which no publisher in the table above asks for.

These are not a sample of books published today. They are famous, out of copyright and mostly nineteenth-century, and editions differ: Gutenberg's Frankenstein, Dorian Gray and Moby-Dick are each one version among several, and Moby-Dick's opening Etymology and Extracts are left out here. Treat the counts as exact for the text named and approximate for the book in general.

How many words is the average book?

No publisher or trade body publishes a measured average word count for books in print, so the "average" figures quoted online are publishers' target ranges, not counts. The guides that rank for the question on 4 November 2026 give ranges of 80,000 to 100,000 or similar, and none cites a dataset of counted books.

The nearest honest answer is the one in the table above: the median of the sixteen classics is about 77,000 words (half are shorter than 77,100, half longer), and the middle of the adult ranges publishers post is in the 70,000 to 100,000 region. For a first novel, a length inside the posted range of the publishers you will submit to matters more than any average.

From word count to pages and reading time

An 80,000-word novel is about 300 printed pages at 5.5 × 8.5 inches, about 244 double-spaced manuscript pages in 12-point Times New Roman, and about five hours of reading. The printed pages come from the book page count calculator in its starting format: Palatino Linotype 11 point, 25 chapters each opening on a new page, 6 front and 2 back pages. The manuscript pages use the 328 words a page the words per page calculator measures for that font. Reading time is at 260 words a minute, the average silent rate for fiction in Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 studies (Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 109).

The trim size moves the printed count most. The same 80,000 words are about 362 pages at 5 × 8 inches and 254 at 6 × 9, by the calculator's comparison by trim size. A manuscript's page count moves with the font: the same 80,000 words in Courier New, at about 221 words a page, are 362 pages instead of 244. That spread is why publishers ask for a word count and not a page count.

At the long end, a word count can outgrow a paperback. Amazon KDP prints black-and-white paperbacks of up to 828 pages on white paper at the common novel sizes, by the limits on the trim size chooser. At about 307 words a page at 5.5 × 8.5 inches, Middlemarch's 318,259 words would need over 1,000 pages before front matter, so it would have to be set smaller, printed on a bigger page or split into volumes.

Which word count a publisher means

None of the submission pages quoted here says how the words are counted, and on prose it hardly matters. Counted two ways, by runs of characters between spaces and by Simple Online Counter's rule, which splits at dashes and slashes, the sixteen classics differed by 0.14% (Frankenstein, 75,072 against 74,964) to 1.86% (Emma, 160,413 against 157,433). A publisher's range is stated in thousands, so the difference never moves a manuscript across one.

The one formatting habit worth knowing is the typed dash. Baen asks for manuscripts with straight quotes and a double hyphen, "--", in place of a dash. A counter that only counts spaces reads "word--word" as one word, so a manuscript full of unspaced double hyphens counts slightly low in some tools. The guide to why word counts differ shows the same text under four counting rules.

Over or under the range

Some publishers state their range as a limit and some as a preference, and the wording on the page tells you which. Bloodhound Books states a "minimum 60,000 and maximum 95,000 word count". Baen says it is "generally uncomfortable with manuscripts under 100,000 words", then adds "but if your novel is really wonderful send it along regardless of length".

A worked example: a 105,000-word psychological thriller.

1. It is 10,000 words over Bloodhound Books' maximum of 95,000, about 9.5% of the book.
2. It is inside Entangled Sideways' 70,000 to 110,000 and over Joffe Books' 60,000 minimum, so both would read it on length.
3. Cutting to 95,000 words means losing about three chapters' worth at the calculator's 3,200 words a chapter, or about 10% from every chapter.
4. In print the cut takes the book from about 400 pages to about 362 at 5.5 × 8.5 inches.

The pages in print are only an estimate; the word count is the number a publisher will ask for, so get it from the full manuscript with the word counter before writing the query letter.

What this guide does not cover

This guide covers novels for adults and young adults, with lengths from publishers that state them. It does not cover picture books, chapter books or middle-grade fiction, which have their own conventions; short stories, novelettes and novellas beyond the boundaries in the award table; or non-fiction and memoir. Many publishers and agents do not post a length, and the figures in this guide change as lines open and close, so treat them as correct for 4 November 2026 and confirm on the page itself.

Self-publishing has no word-count rule. The limits there are pages: a printer's page range for each trim size and paper, and the spine width that follows from it. Simple Online Counter is a free, browser-based set of counters and writing tools; its word counter counts a manuscript in the browser without uploading it, and its book page count calculator turns that count into printed pages.