How Long Should You Make Your Ebook?

If you’re an author planning to publish an ebook, one of the key considerations is the ideal word count range. It can play a huge role for how your ebook looks to prospective buyers, as they can see how much content they are getting. However, here’s a quick breakdown:

Non-fiction ebooks typically run 20,000-60,000 words, while fiction novels are 60,000-100,000+ words.

While it is good to meet these goals, the most important factor is providing enough value and content to satisfy readers.

Word count is an important consideration when writing and publishing an ebook for several reasons. A book that’s too short usually feels incomplete and without depth, leaving readers unsatisfied. On the flip side, an ebook that’s extraordinarily long could exhaust readers and turn them away before finishing (that can also happen if your Flesch reading score is too high).

Ebook word counts also impact pricing strategy. Most ebook retailers like Amazon allow pricing tiers based on total word count or page count. A shorter book may need to be priced lower compared to a full-length novel over 80,000 words.

Many readers feel as if they shouldn’t pay £1.99 for an ebook with less than 20,000 words, but are happy to pay £4.99 for a 100,000 word novel.

Lastly, readers have certain expectations around ebook length based on the genre and whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. Deviating too far from those norms could negatively impact sales and reviews.

The ideal word count range for a fiction ebook depends on the specific genre and audience expectations. However, most full-length novels aimed at adult readers tend to be 60,000-100,000 words at minimum.

In some very popular genres like epic fantasy, word counts over 100,000 words are common to allow for rich world-building and character development across multiple storylines. Other, more compact, genres like cosy mysteries may target a smaller 60,000-80,000 word count.

For novella-length fiction intended as a shorter, one-sitting read, the typical range is 17,500-40,000 words. And for short story collections combining multiple works, overall word counts can vary drastically from 10,000 up to 50,000 words (usually depending on the targeted age).

Some young children’s books are extremely short, occasionally well under 1000 words, but this is an anomaly.

Unlike fiction where readers expect weeks of reading time, non-fiction books are ideally concise and to the point. That means that they’re usually much shorter, as long as you write it correctly.

Because of that, many nonfiction ebooks hit a 20,000-40,000 word zone, particularly for prescriptive or “how-to” genres like business, self-help, parenting advice, etc. This allows authors to cover a topic well without the book feeling bloated.

That said, certain nonfiction genres lend themselves well to more expansive ebook lengths over 60,000 words or more. Detailed historical biographies or academic texts in subjects like philosophy or science writing sometimes exceed 80,000 words.

Many factors influence ideal nonfiction ebook length beyond the core subject matter. Ebooks derived from much larger books may be broken into multiple 40,000-60,000 word volumes released in quick succession. Or an author’s authority and reputation could make longer reads more tempting for followers.

While readers may appreciate a more concise non-fiction ebook that removes the fluff, ebooks that are too short often disappoint buyers. An ebook under 10,000-15,000 words for nonfiction or under 50,000 words for most fiction genres usually feels incomplete and not quite right.

Extremely brief ebooks can negatively impact reviews and sales rankings. Unless intentionally marketed and priced accordingly, like as a short preview, readers expect to get what they pay for.

However, there are some exceptions to these rules. They can include individual essays or novellas. Or illustrated children’s books are usually (much) briefer. But even then, most readers have minimum expectations in each genre that must be met.

So just use your brain and get some feedback. If you keep getting told that it’s too short, expand it, and vice-versa.

On the flip side, unnecessarily long ebooks usually decrease sales as well. Most readers don’t want to invest time in ebooks that ramble endlessly about one small topic.

Us non-fiction authors really need to balance comprehensiveness with making it to the point. While readers want value and full topic coverage, non-fiction ebooks shouldn’t really reach a word count of 80,000.

For most fiction genres, ebooks pushing past 120,000 words begin to face challenges with readers getting tired and bored of the storyline. Unless there are good reasons for it, it’s not worth it.

Editing your book well usually ends up helping with the word count, as they usually end up falling into the right sort of size, because you remove the fluff.

Clearly, there’s no one-size-fits-all ebook length that works across all genres and author goals. But clearly finding out what you should aim for is the goal of this post, right? So how do we find out for you?

Try and start by having a look at other ebooks in your niche. Try and find out what other people similar to you are doing, but then add 10%. This is because most ebook authors undershoot a little.

Fiction writers can make general benchmarks like 1,000-2,000 words per chapter. If structuring 50+ chapters, that could push past 100,000 words fairly easily. (Try to avoid having too many chapters).

For nonfiction, try to outline small aspects of your topic in each chapter. Then eliminate fluff by removing anything that doesn’t actually contribute anything. Be strict with that.

That’s actually about it. Thanks for reading this post. Here’s my blog.