How long is a novel and at what length does it become a marketable proposition? There are varying opinions about this with some suggesting word counts are decreasing in line with society’s move to a lifestyle focused on instant gratification.
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) targets 50,000 words but in his book, No Plot No Problem, founder Chris Baty notes this is a short novel.
The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award is open to books of 50,000 to 150,000 words.
The Clive Cussler Society, for its 2012 Adventure Writers Competition will consider novels of 50,000 to 130,000 words.
In Australia, the CAL/Scribe Fiction Prize considers novels of 40,000 words or more.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for its annual Nebula Award considers a novel to be of 40,000 words or more.
No doubt, the answer to the question how long is a novel, will be different than the answer to how long is a marketable novel. I have heard 80,000 to 100,000 being touted as the ‘correct’ length for a marketable novel - 80,000 to give people a sense of value for money and 100,000 because beyond this the cost of production would require a higher price than the reading public is prepared to pay.
Regardless of the word count, a novel is fictional prose in a narrative style that tells a story in a sequential way. Surely, it is the telling of the story rather than the length of it that is of greatest importance.
What do you think is a minimum length for a marketable novel? What do you think best defines a novel?
