One client tells a story of the time she agreed to swap books with another author. The other person handed her a very slender volume, almost a booklet. At the other end of the spectrum a book of 80, to , words has significant heft, pages. This is not an uncommon length in traditional publishing, especially in my observation for nonfiction books that are heavy on research.
But the modern attention span is shrinking and, in my opinion, pages starts to test the limits of many readers there are always exceptions. I infrequently see self-published authors attempt this length. For my client base, which includes experienced consultants, coaches, and speakers who self-publish, I find a nice book length is somewhere in the 40, to 70,word range, which is pages.
Long enough to feel substantial, short enough not to intimidate potential readers. When in doubt, I suggest people target 50, words to start; then we can assess and see whether there are gaps, too much fluff, etc. Choosing an effective book length depends not only on your content but on your goals, your audience, your publishing route, and your book format.
Perhaps you need to develop more content over time. But assuming you do have enough content, if are you trying to write a comprehensive guide, your book will be on the longer side. If you want to transfer the most critical information to get the reader started, your book may be on the shorter side. And most of us, I imagine, fall somewhere in between, offering a robust yet boundaried discussion. But most of us have another goal in mind.
Here are some common ones my clients have. I want to…. While these goals are not mutually exclusive, in my opinion, thought leadership goals may require a book with more heft; a credibility goal looks more like the sweet-spot range; and a pure marketing play may be able to go shorter. Your audience begins with the people who will read your book.
Consider the differences you might find between an executive and an academic. Or a professional in between jobs and a salesperson trying to hit a quota. How might those differences influence your choice of book length? With self-publishing, you can choose whatever book length you want.
What format book are you developing? As I work, my primary consideration tends to be with the print book my own bias , which I want to feel substantial. I almost always suggest an ebook e. The sweet spot range I suggested 40kk words seems to work well for both formats. If you are only interested in developing an ebook, you can comfortably go to the lower end of the wordcount range. Recent Posts. Speech or speach? For many, they use the latter without knowing that it's a misspelling.
It doesn't even exist in the dictionary! How Do You Spell Niece? Or Is It Neice? Calender vs. Calendar: What Is the Correct Spelling? Any opinions? Hard to say. Neither can we know what every aspiring writer thinks, but, online anyway, most do not give that impression. Most writers who blog and comment seem determined NOT to be an exception, and strive to find out and conform to all sorts of rules and commands and advice.
This article and our comments contain examples of such caution. Writers and people in general fear the exceptional, in themselves and others. Thank you for all these lovely comments that allowed me to procrastinate for a few more minutes from actually writing.
This is a fair beginners number guide. All this is excellent information to keep for reference, but I am wondering about short stories in an anthology. How many words in an anthology might be economically publishable? How many stories included? How many words in an average story included in an anthology? Thanx for your time and trouble. The thing you have to keep in mind is the cost of production. You may enjoy an page story just as much as a page story, but when you get to the checkout, do you want to have two stories for your money, or one?
Uh, no. Word count is negotiable. If the publisher has a convincing argument for cutting a passage or two, the book will be shorter. If it has areas that need further explanation the word count will go up. Keep an open mind and make your case. I think that editors and publishers have specific expectations about the length of the novel more than readers do.
Many of the most popular recent books are well over , words. I just finished Pachinko, which is over pages long, and A Little Life, which is pages long.
Readers tell me that they like getting lost in a book. Many readers just want a story that keeps them reading! Not a memoir. However, the good news is: any writer on here can prove Blake wrong. If you think a ,word memoir will make it past the agent, do it! But Blake is trying to give everyone here some guidelines. No commenter has suggested a , word memoir.
Most of Mr. Clearly different editors have different guidelines. Hi Ann, can you give me an example of a published , word novel? So a , word count makes that novel somewhere around 1, pages. So you simply have a better shot of getting published if your novel is under , words. Shantaram David Gregory Roberts , The Mountain Shadow same author , and 1Q84 Murakami are 3 of my favorite recent books and all hover around , words. Murakami worked up to it.
Roberts probably got lucky that someone took the time to give a first novel of length that kind of attention. Shantara is listed at pages, that puts it around , words. The Mountain Shadow is a little shorter, listed at pages, making that around , words.
Even 1q84 is listed at 1, pages, or about , words. All extremely long novels, especially considering most novels I pick up in the New Release scection hover at about 80, or less.
But still a ways away from , words. As you stated the above novels must be exceptional works or extremely established authors, or both, to get published at that length. I think one of the issues people have is mistaking an exception for a rule. Just because an exceptional author gets their , word space odyssey with their goldfish as the protagonist published everyone assumes word counts irrelevant.
Page number is a terrible way to estimate word count as it depends on the size of the pages, the font size, the font used spacing, leading etc. So to be specific — Shantaram is , words. The Mountain Shadow is , words. So yes all are under , words, but barely.
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