Our fast-paced and digital world has shortened the average human attention span. Supposedly people don’t want to read more than a computer-screen’s worth of content at any one given time, they want to read shorter books and generally they don’t read as much. A good deal of what they do read is online in a condensed form. With digital books as well as print books available today, the length of manuscripts has begun to vary considerably. And some books are simply shorter, following basic reading trends. For this reason, it’s not surprising that aspiring authors have questions about the appropriate length of a manuscript.
So, how long should a manuscript be? Each manuscript should be long enough to adequately tell its story. Thus, one could say each manuscript should be as long as it needs to be! In other words (no pun intended), tell your story in as many words as necessary—no more, no less.
Of course, a printed book probably needs to be at least 100-125 pages in length. Less than 100 pages and it becomes difficult for a printer to print the title of the book on the spine. That means your manuscript must be at least 35-40,000 words long.
The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 words; longer books run about 75,000 words. I asked agents Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen of Larsen Pomada Literary Agency to add their thoughts to the subject. Elizabeth said, “For nonfiction books, it depends on the kind of book. Biographies, for example, can be 200,000 words. How-tos or self-help are usually 40-50,000 words.”
Echoing my earlier sentiment, Michael added, “Someone once said no good book is ever too long, and no bad book is ever too short…I don’t have numbers so much as a simple way for any writer to find out how long a book should be: use successful, comparable books as models.” (This advice can be applied to fiction as well—“Use the books you love as models.” That said, the average adult novel is 100,000, and most publishers for most categories want novels ranging from 80-120,000 but some categories run shorter. )
Still unsure of how long to make your nonfiction book? Go out and find similar books to the one you want to write and figure out how many words are in the book. Then model your manuscript after that book. If you want to write a memoir, for example, look at four or five similar memoirs and determine their word-count. Then produce a manuscript that falls within a similar range.
Ebooks vary widely in length. An ebook, could be quite short—3,000 words—or as short as you can get away with. I’ve also seen some that are quite long—as long as a full-length book. In fact, many printed books are turned into ebooks. Again, check out books in your genre or category; find your competing or complementary books, and then write a manuscript of similar length.
When it comes right down to it, the length or your manuscript won’t be a problem to an editor or publisher if what’s on the pages of your manuscript are worth publishing. Just keep the length reasonable.
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OMG, I feel like such a dunce for not examining the length of other novels in the genre I’m writing. What an obvious tool! That being said, for now I’ve arbitrarily chosen 90k words as my end goal. I know I’ll need to do a lot of rewrites and cuts, and will likely have to flesh out certain scenes, so I can adjust length more accurately at that point. Thanks for the great tip!
You are welcome. You can adjust now…since you are not done yet. Just sayin’.
Haloo pleas I need advice
I was wroote 174,000 woords heart touch autobiographi it’s refeuge jeiurney .
Iam writing by own language now iam living netherland please how can publishit in English?
Get a translator, Jigssa. And an editor. Then publish.
Today I hit the 30 000 word milestone for a life transformation manuscript I plan to self publish – being a first time African author. decided to google average length for non-fiction manuscripts and I discover I am still 15 to 20 000 words short to make production work easy! Back to the keyboard.
YOu determine length when you self-publish. But yes, 50,000 words is the shortest most publishers will release.
My word count for a memoir and prescriptive nonfiction manuscript comes in at 39,000
I truly do not feel my story should be longer because. I do not think my target audience will want to read much more. It is intended to share and teach about a challenging life change that readers need to learn from in a short period of time in order to make important decisions for someone else’s life.
As I’ve heard, a book should be whatever length necessary to tell the story. And if the book is self-published, it’s up to you totally.
Nina, I have slightly more than 100,000 words of opinion pieces to publish as a book. How shall I proceed?
Organize them by topic. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of opinion about a variety of topics.
So 50,000 words is the minimum for a non-fiction book. I heard 10,000 words can be accepted as an e-book at a short length at least for non-fiction. I guess 50,000 is a short novel and some early novels before goes as low as 40,000 which can be considered to be a Novella. I think quality of content is more important than just writing words not too short and not too long.
These numbers are industry standards. Ebooks can be as short as 4,000 words…but remember to offer real value.
I have been writing a long time and even had a class in college for Creative Writing. I was wondering if I could get help in starting a novel. I have started one, but not sure I have written it right. It is about a man telling his adventures to young children. I started it when I was in college and the professor liked it. She said I wrote like Walt Whitman and said I should finish the story and have it published. I’m not sure if it is right to date. I have adventures, comedy, and use all five senses in the book. I guess I would like to know if it is right by a real author. Any advice? I would love to have at least one book published.
Hire an editor! They will tell you if it is good and help you improve it, if necessary.