How many words is a novella?

Q: A writing contest I was thinking of entering says it accepts “novellas”; how long is a novella?

There’s no hard or fast rule about how many words makes a novella. It’s largely a subjective matter for which editors and publishers assign arbitrary numbers based on their needs and available space. Word counts used in science fiction’s Hugo and Nebula contests list a novella as 17,501-40,000 words, though. Sometimes editors and contests go as low as 7,500 words, however.

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