What's the perfect page count for a novel?
Many writers are obsessed
with page and word counts. I suspect that some of this obsession
is the writing equivalent of "Are we there yet?", but it's also tough to
know what kind of story to tell until you figure out how many pages you
have to tell it in. Plus, publishers reputedly want books that
are very close to the average length in each genre, so the advice to
make the story as long as it wants to be doesn't hold water if you're
writing for publication. The internet abounds with recommended
word counts for various genres, such as:
Low
High
Average
Middle readers
25,000
40,000
35,000
Young adult
25,000
80,000
Romance
40,000
100,000
85,000
Mystery/thriller/crime
55,000
100,000
90,000
Horror
80,000
100,000
90,000
Western
80,000
100,000
Chick lit
80,000
110,000
100,000
Literary fiction
65,000
120,000
100,000
Science fiction/fantasy
80,000
120,000
What I find fascinating
is that the trend among indie authors on Amazon is to write books at or
below the low end word counts in at least some genres. And readers
lap these small books up. Yes, some readers complain in the
review section that the book feels short, but best-sellers continue to
clock in with low word counts. Here are some estimates for indie
word counts on Amazon's bestseller lists:
Low
High
Average
Young adult
21,000
156,000
80,000
Paranormal romance
14,000
125,000
66,000
Paranormal fantasy
9,000
128,000
70,000
Although indie young
adult actually seems to be longer than mainstream young adult, it's
interesting to see so many books on the paranormal bestseller lists that
don't even really hit novella length. The two paranormal
bestseller lists are so well-stocked with indie titles that I only
inventoried the top 40 indie titles in each, but among paranormal
fantasy books, 15% came in below 40,000 words (estimating 275 words per
kindle page). It seems that as long as the price is 99 cents, just
about any word count goes.
This
got me wondering whether the page counts that publishers want are based
on storytelling...or on printing and bookstore economics. Since
most indie authors sell nearly all of their books in e-form, they have
no incentive to pad a novel to make it look better on the shelf.
Is it possible that, without the shackles of print to hold them back,
the best stories are on the short side? Maybe the reason indie
authors are pushing mainstream authors off the best-seller lists in
certain categories is because their shorter works are more appealing to
the masses...especially with the resulting lower price tag.
The photo here includes some of the books that I can't live without, which run the gamut in size, but tend toward short. I'd
be curious to hear about your favorite books as well. How long
are the ones you love the most? Do you find short books lacking in
substance, or do they often capture a more simple, spare story that
sticks with you for days to come? Are the best novels short?
