How Many Words in a Book? 2026 Averages and Trends from Reedsy

In a very loose way, it's important to adhere to genre standards in word count simply because they've developed over time in response to what works best in the market. There are always exceptions, but those are usually backed up by an established author or sweeping support from retailers, librarians, or the media backing the book.

BUT FIRST: write the book you want! This is your book, and you can always edit it down or beef it up. It's important to write for yourself first, because the best story will come out of that. And if you change it later, so be it. Don't let market expectations stop your drafting or creative process!

If you're planning on querying agents and going the traditional route, then adhering to standard word count expectations is essential. Are there exceptions to the rules? Sure, but you never want to plan on being the exception to the rule when you're already going up against long odds.

Querying is incredibly competitive, and an agent seeing that your manuscript is already in the target word count range for your genre tells them that you're probably aware of market expectations and have given real thought to your project's development. On the other hand, if they see a word count that's 20k outside the realm of expectations, that tells them they're either going to have to work with you to get the word count down/up, or potentially have a more difficult time selling your project to publishers.

On the other hand, if you're planning on self-publishing, word count isn't all that important. You don't want to write something the length of a short story and call it a novel, but the important thing in the self-publishing world is to tell a good story. Whether your mystery novel is 30k words, 60k words, 90k words, or even 130k words, your readers won't care as long as the story is great, whereas an agent would likely say no immediately if they saw a query for a 30k or 130k mystery novel, without even getting past that first sentence of your query where they'd see the word count.

If you don't know whether or not you plan to publish traditionally, the best way to set yourself up for success is to research the target word count range for your genre/audience, and then adhere to that expectation as closely as possible. Do be aware that word count expectations can change over time, so you want to make sure that your source for target word count is fairly recent.

That said, if you don't want to put extra pressure on yourself to meet industry standards before you're even done drafting, then there's no reason to focus on anything other than writing the best story you can; then, once you're done, you can take a look at word count expectations, hire a developmental editor to get expert eyes on your novel, and decide from there what makes the most sense for a publication plan.

There's no concrete rule, and this is where reading your work aloud can help you decipher how your writing sounds when it's spoken. Paragraph length can effect pace and flow.

Very long paragraphs make your book look dense and turgid. Readers can get bogged down in all the information and feel like they don't draw breath until they reach a paragraph break. Very short paragraphs can make the book feel bitty and disjointed, as if you're jumping from point to point. It can make your work read like a list of facts.

Paragraph length can be used to great effect. The occasional very short paragraph of just a couple of lines in between lots of longer paragraphs can add drama and tension to your writing. At the end of a chapter it can be a cliffhanger, but like everything less is more so don't do that in every chapter.

My biggest advice to anyone concerned with paragraph length is don't overthink it. Write the book first, and then in the editing process, read it aloud to yourself and you will hear if it doesn't sound right as we automatically pause after a paragraph. We don't notice that when we read to ourselves, but we do when we read aloud.

As a mainly non-fiction editor, I work with paragraph length like this: the leading sentence in the paragraph provides a succinct idea, then the rest of the paragraph adds the potatoes to the meat, in two to three sentences. Let´s face it, readers often have short attention spans. They like white space and short bursts of meaning. Paragraphs of a few sentences, even if long ones, are good!