Many indie/self-publishing authors want to know how long their books "should be." Here are my thoughts on the subject. The long and short of it is that book lengths don't matter. Stories matter. The good news is that indie authors have more freedom to write the story they want.

One of the beauties of self-publishing is that we have more leeway to tell the story we want/need to tell. Traditional agents, editors, and publishers push books into a "standard" range of book lengths and force new authors toward the lower end because they cost more to publish.

NOTE: Publishers know the industry, so they might be right.

YOUR STORY

The most important thing you need to keep in mind is that it is your book and your story, so make the story as long or short as it needs to be. While articles and blog posts may need to focus on brevity, books are, by definition, long-format. That gives you the freedom to choose whether to write a tome or a quick read.

If you drone on to pad your book, you won't be true to yourself and your readers will notice. Because you write for yourself and toil endlessly to share your hard work with the world, it would be a shame to ruin it.

If you cut the book by skimping on the setting, mood, character arc, or plot, you will lose your interest in the work and leave readers wanting. Let your pages shine.

Consideration: Longer books cost more to print, meaning higher print costs.

GET FEEDBACK

Once you've written the story you want, put your words in front of trusted beta readers to get their impression. Are you boring them with long exposition? Are you losing them in the details? Does your main character have enough emphasis on the page? It is easy to be too close to our writing to see it from an objective viewpoint. Your readers have fresh eyes, so they can ground your work in a way that will resonate with other readers.

Resources: This post may help you get your head around feedback.

Here are a few important things to remember about getting feedback.

Always be gracious.
They're trying to help, not hurt.
They aren't always right.
They raise issues, not fixes.
They must enjoy/read your genre.
Always be gracious (Intentionally repeated).

THE LANDSCAPE

If you aren't the type to jump into data, that's okay. The gist of what will follow is that your books can have wildly different lengths than "industry standards." Average book lengths vary by genre, but individual books can be half or double the standard within that genre and still be phenomenal.

Note: Readers almost never look at book length before buying/reading.

Book lengths may range drastically within a single series. The longest or shortest may be at the beginning, end, or somewhere in the middle. The authors wrote the stories as they needed to be told.

THE DATA

GENRE RANGES

Different genres have different average lengths and ranges for the "standard books." While readers almost never look at a book-length online, some pay more attention when browsing in brick-and-mortar stores. Many successful books break these industry standards.

Fantasy & Sci-Fi: 90-130k
Mystery & Thriller: 70-100k
Literary Fiction: 70-100k
Romance: 70-100k
Historical Fiction: 80-120k
Young Adult: 50-80k
Middle Grade: 20-55k
Memoir: 50-90k
Nonfiction: 50-80k

ONE GENRE

Within a genre, the lengths vary more than most people would have you believe. Because I know Sci-Fi the best, here are some great Sci-Fi novels from very successful indie-published books and their word counts.

The Space Legacy Series (Self-Pub): 90-115k
Expeditionary Force Series (Self-Pub): 130-215k
Wool Omnibus: 180k
Undying Mercenaries: 120-180k

Note: Longer audiobooks are more expensive to hire narrators.

VARIATION IN SERIES

Books within a series can have wildly different lengths. Usually, the first book is the shortest, and later books are longer. To give you a sense of some of the variation in novel length within a single series, here are some of my favorite traditionally published Sci-Fi novels.

Bobiverse Series: 96-204k
Undying Mercenaries Series: 130-190k
Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars: 290-385k
Lost Fleet Series: 115-135k
Mountain Man Omnibus (Apocalyptic): 335k
Arison Series (Apocalyptic): 60-220k
Rebel Fleet Series: 125-145k

Note: These are highly successful books by established authors, so the results may be skewed.

SINGLE-AUTHOR VARIATION

To put my words where my mouth is, here is where my books stand. As you can see, they are all over the place. Sci-Fi tends to run longer than other genres, so this biases my expectations of what a novel should be. I'm not saying my books are selling like hotcakes, but this gives you a sense of where I stand.

Day After Infinity (Hard Sci-Fi): 104k
Metal (Apocalyptic): 124k
Nanoverse Series (YA - Superhero): 93-113k
ENDED Series (Hard Sci-Fi - In progress): 140-165k

TRADITIONALLY PUB'ED BOOKS

Sticking to the Sci-Fi theme to compare cybatronic apples with cybatronic apples, here is the variation in length within the genre. With books from 61k to 181k words, you can see there is no standard.

Red Rising - 124k
Old Man's War - 90k
Dune - 185k
Forever Peace - 104k
The Ghost Brigades - 103k
Hammerfall - 157k
Mars - 175k
Ender's Shadow - 140k
Hidden Empire - 171k
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - 61k
The Parable of the Sower - 178k
The Mote in God's Eye - 178k
The Musashi Flex - 91k
Steampunk Trilogy - 88k (average)
City of Bones - 130k
Hellbent - 66k
Wicked Lovely - 73k
The Lost Art - 115k
The Knife of Never Letting Go - 112k
The Inferior - 99k
The Windup Girl - 145k
The City & The City - 108k
Boneshaker - 145k
Palimpsest - 104k
Julian Comstock - 181k

INDIE AUTHOR WCS

Here are some word counts from authors who responded to my request for word counts to see the variety in lengths of indie books. If you want to add to this list, please follow this link to the request thread on X.

The Beginning of an End - 100k - Fantasy - C.I. Scarlett
Dragon Spawn Chronicles (6) - 75-123k - Sci-Fi - Dawn Ross
Behold: Humanity! Series - 140k (ave) - Sci-Fi - Ralts Bloodthorne
Finding Balance - 64k - Romance - Andrea Todd
Lessons From a Gif - 51k - Romance - Andrea Todd
King Oak - 103k - Historical Fiction - Catherine Arthur
Michaelmas Fayre - 126k - Historical Fiction - Catherine Arthur
Relentless Blades - 116k - Fantasy - Russell Carroll
The Revenant Series (4) - 39-82k - Fantasy - Herman P. Hunter
Virtual Rebel - 91k - YA/Sci-Fi - J.Z. Pitts
Geomancer's Apprentice (5) - 81-86k - Urban Fantasy - Yin Leong
The Shards Trilogy - 98-101k - Fantasy/Sci-Fi - Jason Gabriel
Fires of an Empire Saga (5) - 81-108k - Fantasy - Jessica Barberi
Sidetracked - 127k - Fantasy - S.K. Kelley
Fiberglass Merman - 103k - Fantasy - Aster Quinn
Stobrimore Chronicles (8) - 102-119k - Fantasy - Matthew Johnson
The Hunter of Fareldin - 168k - Fantasy - K Aagard
The San's Cellar - 60k - Child Memoir - B McKenna
Contract Made After Death - 125-172k - Fantasy - T.J. Sidebottom
Three Rivers Plague - 214k - Apocalyptic - Zachary & Joshua Forbes
Iron Bones Infection - 17k - Horror - Adam T. Best
Ambush - 86k - Romance - Colleen Coble
Heroes of Valhalla - 132k - Historical Fantasy - C.K. Kesterson
The Demon Slayers Series (3) - 88-96k - Urban Fantasy - M.N. Beck
Orchestra of the Gods - 162k - Fantasy - Damien Buckley
Seven Standalone Books - 45-65k - Literary Fiction - Mark Nash
Song to the Siren - 92k - Horror/Romance - Barb Lien-Cooper & Park Cooper
The Dremmer Series - 126-154k - Historical Fiction - Sam Pakan
Bathed in Moonlight - 86k - Romance - Stacia Kaywood
The Calling - 147k - Sci-Fi - Branwen OShea
Stealing Annabelle - 85k - Romance - Stacia Kaywood
ASH - 63k - Sci-Fi - Grace Walker
The Aos Si's Gift - 280k - Fantasy - Chris Shirk

Note: I used the data provided by the authors, so some of this data may be incomplete or incorrect.

PRE-MADE PLANS

Want a head start? These ready-made task lists turn this post into a checklist you can work through in Tasks:

Decide Your Book Length

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