Why Word Count Matters

How a Book’s Word Count Affects Writers, Publishers, and Readers

Photo by Kaleidico from Unsplash

If you were here about two weeks ago, thank you, and welcome back! My blog “How I Cut Down My Novel by 20,000 Words” got me thinking about word counts and book publishing—and how, especially pre-publication, your word count dictates many factors of the industry and writing process.

I have broken this blog up into three sections, each addressing how a book’s word count affects writers, publishers, and readers. Most of this will pertain to the authors pursuing self-publishing or those authors querying for representation. If you are self-publishing, the publisher part will also apply to you, as it’s more about the production/finances of publishing which, like all other things in self-publishing, you are responsible for.

Why Word Count Matters for Writers

Word Count Determines What the Work is Called

Million-word fan fictions. Short stories in ten words or less. Novelette, novella, novel—all of these works have different word counts, and that length—not your page count—decides what it’s called. What a work is called helps place it in its appropriate space, whether it should be submitted to a publisher or literary journal. If it’s somewhere in between, a niche publisher may take this and publish it in a book format.  

Here are some quick stats to figure out what you’ve written based on your current word count:

0–1k: Flash Fiction

1k–10k: Short Story

10k–25k: Novelette

25k–40k: Novella

40k–50k and above: Novel

There are a myriad of blogs that go over what each genre’s word count. While I have a quick guide here, it’s not as in-depth as others, as I want to talk more about the impact of word count in other spaces. I encourage you to read those blogs that go more in-depth on word count metrics for writers.

Word Count Shifts Depending on Your Genre and Audience

When writers sit down to write, they tend to have researched the average length of a novel in X genre for such-and-such age range to help guide them in the writing process. Most novels should be at a minimum fifty thousand words, but factors like age, genre, and content will change what is acceptable—and needed—to tell a great story. (Please do not consult whatever your search engine’s AI is. It’s wrong about this so often.)

I’ll use myself as an example: I’m aiming for target audience of new adult/adult fantasy readers, ages between fifteen and thirty who like action-adventure fantasy, elemental magic, coming-of-age narratives, and B-plot slow-burn-across-multiple-books romance. Though my current word count is 165k, I’d feel much more comfortable publishing at 150k (140k my most ideal) due: (1) fantasy having a typically higher word count than other genres, (2) it is a multi-realm novel with some dual POV chapters, (3) my upper-YA target audience is used to reading books that are 80k to 120k words, and (4) the adult fantasy half of my target audience often reads books that are 130k to 170k words.

While I do believe word count is subjective and content should be king, word counts are a good metric to rein us over-writers (especially me) in. We’re no longer getting paid per word, and for good reason! Words-for-word’s sake is not enjoyable for anyone—readers most of all.

An “Automatic” Way to Figure Out Pacing

There’s a general notion that a novel outside of the genre’s word count range has poor pacing, especially for a first-time author. They might be spending too long getting to the main story, losing track of details, have an unfocused goal, or characters not developing fast enough to keep readers engaged. On the flip side, saying that you have a ten-thousand-word novel is not only incorrect, it isn’t nearly enough content to give a good story if the goal is to be a novel.

Pacing is all about how content and length work together. If you have a higher word count without much going on, this will what is generally make people believe you have bad pacing. Lots of action/development but low word count, while probably more acceptable, can still lead to content feeling rushed, forced, or your story having less of an emotional pull. They key here, is this: Use your word count effectively. With constant flow of action, character development, and solid story, you can have a great story and a long word count. 

Why Word Counts Matters for Publishers

An “Automatic” Way to Figure Out a Writer’s Skills

Following the note on pacing, a writer who queries a manuscript that’s under or over a genre’s word count will be an immediate beige flag. If quite a bit under or over, you could be an instant red flag. An agent makes money pitching manuscripts to publishers they think publishers will buy, and if they know that publishers won’t take books that are over two hundred thousand words and by debut authors, they may seriously consider it. They might read your sample, but if they aren’t hooked in those first few pages, odds are, neither will a publisher commit to investing thousands of dollars to edit, print, market, and distribute it. In the same way, too short may mean not enough “meat” to sell. While some may be willing to take a chance and help their author revise (cut or add content) before going on submission, this isn’t guaranteed.

Most authors only get large word counts because they have “earned” it due to previous publishing history (i.e., publishers know this book will sell because the author has a built-in audience). Even one of the most widely read fantasy authors, Sarah J. Maas, had Throne of Glass standing at 240k when she first queried it. She cut it down to get her agent, then again to get her publisher. From what I can find, the novel is now hovering between 90k and 100k. The books in the ToG series get longer as they go because she has earned it.

Word Count Affects Page Count Affects Profit Margins

Depending on how you lay out your book, what font style and size you use, you can drastically change your novel’s length. For example, I printed ARCs of my book for my beta readers. I’d never laid out a book before, so I tested a variety of fonts, sizes, and styles to see how each looked. I used a different font for each part of my book: 12-point font in Garamond, 11.5 in Goudy Old Style, and 12 in Centaur. Knowing that most paperback books are in 5.5X8.5 layout, I made those my dimensions. My book printed at 630 pages.

Note how many factors I mentioned: font style, font size, paper size, and the general layout.

I did another printing, deciding to go with Garamond in font size 11 all throughout. In a 5.5X8.5 book, it’s now 530 pages—a hundred-page drop! And since I’m thinking about offering a POD hardcover option, I laid that out in the new dimensions (most hardcovers are in 6X9) but with the same font and size. The total? 480 pages.

Guess what didn’t change across any of these? The word count.

So you may be thinking, This isn’t word count affecting page count, and yes, this is true. You can manipulate your formatting to help your book have less pages. But what’s also true is that unless I want to have the most abysmal layout in all of self-publishing history—make the font super tiny, have no margins, have my layout go into the book’s gutter—I have to accept that no matter what I do, this book will always be long—450 pages minimum. The only way I can go lower and still have a quality layout is by cutting words. If I can get this to my ideal word count, I could even up the font’s size a bit, making it easier to read, which makes the layout overall nicer and gives my reader a better experience.  

Every page printed is another few cents to pay, and the publisher has the budget to print X many pages before they get into risky territory of making their money back. When you’re self-publishing, this has a direct impact on your royalties, since the price of printing in taken out of your sale price. Yes, you can “make up for it” buy raising your book’s price, but you don’t want to price it so high people won’t buy it.

While writing is an art, publishing is a business. There’s a lot of ways these can mutually respect and benefit one another. Word count has been used as a tool for how both can coexist, asking writers to write their story, but with an economical word count.

Editorial Costs

While a book’s layout can be manipulated to be more cost effective for printing, it has a direct,  and often unavoidable, influence on editing costs. For a publisher, this means the time they allocate for their staff members to work on it.  Publishers and self-publishers also have to budget for having multiple freelancers perform copyedits, proofreads, and cold reads.

For self-publishing authors, that means you are responsible for pay said freelance editors. Different levels of editing cost different amounts, but many editors go by a cent-per-word metric. For instance, you’ve written a literary fiction novel of about 70,000 words. According to the EFA’s 2024 rates survey, the ethical rate for hiring a copy editor would be two to three cents per word. Depending on what the editor charges (and some do charge less), you might pay anywhere between $1,400 and $2,100 for your book to be copyedited. And this is just one round of editing.

Why Word Counts Matters for Readers

Book’s Overall Look

When most of our book shopping was done in bookstores, the idea was that the bigger the book, the bigger the spine, the easier it is to see on the shelf. Thus, more readers stop to look, meaning a higher likelihood of buying. This can still true for physical bookstores, but buying online has made it less relevant.

Depending on how long or short a book is, this will attract a certain type of reader. Are they looking for a quick read for a trip or a big series to sink into? While you cannot control what type of book a reader is looking for, you can use your book’s length to market to your target audience. For instance, your 65k mystery is a perfect page-turner for someone who is going on a vacation and wants something they can get a chapter or two done when they have a few minutes of downtime.

Giving Readers Their Money’s Worth

The amount of content you give readers can correlate to how much they are willing to spend. This is why nonfiction tends to be priced higher than fiction, because it’s more technical content (research, facts, citations, etc.). This doesn’t mean the content in a smaller book wasn’t good, but when weighting if I should buy a hardcover novella for $24.00 that I can read in two hours or a thick fantasy book in paperback for $18.00 that will take me ten to twelve hours,  I’ll be going for the one that gives me more content for less money.

Overall Story Enjoyment and Attention Spans

It’s hard to find the perfect balance of word count to story, one that has your reader enjoying the world and characters without getting annoyed, tired, or bored. In America, our world moves fast, and social media/the digital age has shortened people’s attention spans and caused an overall lack of patience. Readers want immediate gratification from the first few pages; otherwise, they’ll look elsewhere. If you can tighten your beginning, nay your whole book, to keep it flowing, it’s more likely your readers will commit to your book and buy it.

Now that I’m thinking about attention spans, how many people actually made it to the bottom of this blog? If you did, comment below! You must have a great attention span!

 

The Aspect That Affects All Three – Competitive, Comparison Market Titles

Page counts are more for readers to track their progress. So as a writer, I can get a bit frustrated when I’m in a bookstore, looking at newly released titles for research. I want to see if I’m writing a competitive, comparable market title to what’s already out there, and while I can find a few books with similar content, I have no idea what their word count is.

A comp title is a book that has similar aspects to your own, whether in content, length, or themes. For example, if you are writing a dystopian sci-fi where people are imbued with animal traits to better survive on new worlds, you would look for books that have similar content to this. This comp titles guide you and/or your publisher in what kind of target audience already exists for the book, how well it sells, and influence cover design. Comp titles can also help you identify how short or long your book should be, given that you can see what length readers are willing to read for stories like yours.   

Sometimes I can find a blog article of the author addressing how long their novel is, which is more than appreciated! But often I’m left to the literary calculators and people giving their best guess. I get very skewed results on the search engines/autogenerated metrics that try and guess based off of reading speed how many words a book is. Could be right? Could be wrong? We won’t know. If you have a list of books that you would use as comp titles for your WIP, try and find a blog article from the author, addressing how many words the book is. Look at the average, and as you’re writing, use that has a guide for how long your book could be. But overall, no matter the word count, make sure you love your story, and you stand by every word you’ve put in it.   

Write on,

Sterling M.Z.