Thanks to everyone who has made this biennial post a favorite of the blog. Whether you are a seasoned novelist or a newbie author, I wish you good luck on your work in progress. Now on to word counts for traditionally published and indie authors.
Continue reading “2020 Do word counts count?”Tag: Word count
I like numbers.
After all, I do pretend to be a banker from time to time. And what can be more banker-ish (that is so not a word, but should be) than my annual Do Word Counts Count? post. It’s an annual look at the word counts of bestselling teen books as well as a comparison between traditional and indie published word counts.
It’s the first question that most new authors ask, but there isn’t much out there on the topic. While there are no official ranges for fiction novels, there is an expectation.
To start, we take a look at bestselling authors. Below is the Barnes & Noble bestselling teen fiction list from earlier this month. Every book on it is traditionally published, which should give us an idea of strategy for the market makers.
| Barnes & Noble Bestselling Teen Fiction 5/4/15 | ||
| Novel | Page Count | Word Count* |
| The Heir by Kiera Cass | 368 | 92,000 |
| An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir | 464 | 118,384 |
| Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard | 400 | 100,000 |
| Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen | 432 | 108,000 |
| A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah Maas | 432 | 108,000 |
| To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee | 384 | 96,000 |
| Paper Towns by John Green | 336 | 84,000 |
| After the End by Amy Plum | 352 | 88,000 |
| We Were Liars by E. Lockhart | 240 | 60,000 |
| Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews | 304 | 76,000 |
*Word counts are estimated based on the standard of 250 words per page
Weird random fact: The 1st place book in today’s 2015 list has the exact same number of pages as the 1st place in the 2013 list (The Fault in Our Stars).
Last year’s B&N Teen Bestseller word counts averaged 88,875 words. This year’s average is 93,038.
To get an idea of word count average for indie authors, below are the current bestselling books from Smashwords, a leading distributor of indie novels. As you will see, these are significantly lower word counts than their B&N counterparts.
| Smashwords Young Adult/Teen Bestsellers 5/4/15 | ||
| Novel | Words | |
| His Bad Boy Ways by Faye Aden | 55,850 | |
| Flit by Abieth Winter | 78,810 | |
| Wisdom by Amanda Hocking | 91,079 | |
| Torn by Ashley Stambaugh | 83,040 | |
| Newborn by Joshua Dee Preece | 19,670 | |
| Undeniably Chosen by Shelly Crane | 152,550 | |
| Crutch by Alex Rushmur | 2,600 | |
| Bloodline by Kei | 9,950 | |
| Masked SheWolf by Yara Gharios | 108,550 | |
| Rise of the Valiant by Morgan Rice | 81,050 | |
Last year’s Smashwords list included a novella, so I think it’s interesting to note that this year’s list contains two: Newborn and Bloodline.
Average word count for books distributed through Smashwords is 68,314, well under the 93K plus we saw from the B&N bestsellers. Not surprising. The last two years have demonstrated the same as traditionally published works on average tend to be longer than indie published work (though there are exceptions).
As a writer, I typically hear 55k-80k is the way to go for a Young Adult novel. I used to hear that a debut author should never go over 100k as publisher’s, tight with their dollars, often find it hard to justify printing that many pages on an unknown. These numbers seem to reinforce those mindsets with a decreasing average word count every year.
Here’s the comparison over the last few years that I’ve been doing this post.
Bottom line: Keep it short and sweet, kids.
Last year, I compiled a post called Do Word Counts Count? which continues to be the single most viewed post on my blog. It’s not a shock that authors are perplexed when it comes to the subject of word counts. There seems to be no single resource. No hard and fast rules.
So in lieu of rules, I offer you examples. Here’s a look at word counts for some of the most popular YA books on the market.
| Barnes & Noble Bestselling Teen Fiction 9/10/2014 | ||
| Novel | Page Count | Word Count* |
| If I Stay by Gayle Foreman | 320 | 80,000 |
| Where She Went by Gale Foreman | 304 | 76,000 |
| The Maze Runner by James Dashner | 400 | 100,000 |
| Four by Veronica Roth | 304 | 76,000 |
| To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee | 384 | 96,000 |
| The Revenge of Seven by Pittacus Lore | 371 | 92,750 |
| The Giver by Lois Lowry | 240 | 60,000 LOWEST |
| The Fault in Our Stars by John Green | 336 | 84,000 |
| Gone by Michael Grant | 576 | 144,000 HIGHEST |
| The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey | 320 | 80,000 |
*Word counts are estimated based on the standard of 250 words per page
B & N Bestsellers Average Word Count: 88,875
To get an idea of word count average for indie authors, below are the current bestselling books from Smashwords, a leading distributor of indie novels. As you will see, these are significantly lower word counts than their B&N counterparts.
| Smashwords Young Adult/Teen Bestsellers 9/10/13 | ||
| Novel | Words | |
| Lending Light by Rose Christo | 94,250 | |
| Courting Magic by Stephanie Burgis | 34,590 LOWEST | |
| Haunted by Sherry H. Dec | 57,920 | |
| Rooming with Ash by Zee King | 48,150 | |
| The Dogs of Balboa by Rose Christo | 81,420 | |
| The Posterchildren: Origins by Kitty Burroughs | 133,870 HIGHEST | |
| B Chord by Mike Robertson | 84,440 | |
| Notice Me by Lili Lam | 92,360 | |
| Storm Shells by GJ Walker-Smith | 126,680 | |
| Ashley Fulton & the Secret of Europe by Ross Rossin | 85,610 | |
Smashwords Bestsellers Average Word Count: 83, 829
I found it interesting that a novella made it into the Smashwords bestsellers. If you read my article of last year, you’ll see one novella in that list too. Also, our highest word count, The Posterchildren: Origins, appeared on last year’s list; however, the author must have uploaded a lengthier, revised version as last year’s word count was only 127,604 (compared to stated 133,870 words this year).
And speaking of last year, I thought it would be fun to compare these numbers to the article I wrote last year to see if I could spot any trends. And I did. Average words counts for 2014 are noticeably lower than those of last year. The Smashwords (indie and small press) novels dipped slightly in word counts; while the traditionally published bestsellers from B&N greatly decreased in word count, nearly meeting the typically lower counts of the indies.
Did indies get it right? Are traditionally published authors now scrambling to produce shorter works? Is less more in the fiction novel industry? I’ll let you be the judge.
Other articles you might like:
Do word counts count 2018 update
How is the virus changing preferred book formats?
There are surprisingly few articles on the subject of word and page counts in novel writing. Yet, it is something that perplexes many indie authors.
According to Colleen Lindsay, associate director for marketing, social media and reader experience for NAL/Berkley and former book agent, the rule of thumb on word count for mainstream YA fiction novels is between 45 and 80 thousand words. She goes on to say that YA paranormal and fantasy average word counts tend to run a little higher with the top of the range at 120 thousand. She notes that many publishers try to stay below 100 thousand to keep production costs low.
Continue reading “Do word counts count?”