Do we have a clear rule for difference novella-novel?

[☕ Lachgas ♿]

As I ran (again) into a series where one of the as novels assigned books in the series has only 150-168 pages and as far as I know we consider that as novella - is there a line between these two? or does that just depends on every librarian and I'm a nitpicker? (no need to have more discussions about that so would be fine if rule says novel is ok...)

In my head is 200 pages as the pagecount for being a novel - I would've bet I read that once in forum but I couldn't find that although I tried with several key words and went several years back.
So is that just a number I made up somehow or based on something I just couldn't find anymore?
(I know that there are in general word counts to determin that but as we use pages and as I have no idea how many words are on one page I couldn't even calculate)

And are there exeptions for cases were (assuming that my 200 are not fantasy I just take that for example) several books have more than 200 and one has 19x and the other 16x - does the 19x count as novel then because it's so close? (could be used with other numbers if there is another line)

[Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂]

I wold be interested in a ruling. Harlequin M&B are considered novels & most of the older ones anyway would be 50-55000 words. I have one on hand & it is 189 pages.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I don't know where it might have been discussed previously. I find this here, where a page is 250 words, so 40k is 160 pages: http://daringnovelist.blogspot.com/20...

"Now as to length definitions:

The Science Fiction Writers of America uses these definitions for its Nebula awards, and most people consider them to be pretty standard:

Short fiction: under 7,500 words
Novelette: 7,500-17,500 words
Novella: 17,500-40,000 words
Novel: 40,000 words and up"

[Miriam]

Not commenting on the actual length as a determinate, but just adding something else to consider if there is a hard dividing line:

Does format count?
example: if the hardcover says it has 215 pages and the Kindle or ebook says 160.
Would we take the average? Does the print count trump the estimated count of a Kindle?
What about international editions? I've seen a foreign edition vary significantly from an American English edition (sometimes by more than 100 pages).

[rivka, Former Moderator]

There are often other indicators as well. Such as whether a borderline-length work is (or previously has been) identified by an author as a novella.