A novel is 40,000 words or more. That is the one genuinely authoritative definition, and both major bodies agree on it exactly.
Beyond that, the familiar per-genre table is mostly invented. Two genres have real published figures. The rest do not, and no authoritative body publishes a table of ranges at all.
The Definition That Is Real
The SFWA's Nebula Award rules:
"Short Story: fewer than 7,500 words" "Novelette: at least 7,500 words but fewer than 17,500 words" "Novella: at least 17,500 words but fewer than 40,000 words" "Novel: 40,000 words or more"
The World Science Fiction Society constitution, governing the Hugo Awards, gives identical boundaries: "Best Novel. A science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more."
Two bodies, independently, same four numbers. That is as settled as anything in this territory gets.
The boundaries are explicitly soft, which almost nobody mentions. The WSFS constitution allows relocating a work "provided that the length of the story is within twenty percent (20%) of the new category limits". So a 38,000 word work can be treated as a novel.
What Is Actually Published, By Genre
| Genre | Sourced figures | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Romance | 50,000 to 75,000 for category romance; up to 100,000+ for trade | Excellent |
| Science fiction | 40,000 floor; one publisher "think 70k+" | Good |
| Cosy mystery | 65,000 minimum (MWA); 75,000 to 100,000 (Kensington) | Good |
| Fantasy | 40,000 floor only | Thin |
| Thriller | 60,000 minimum from one publisher | Weak |
| Literary | No definition exists | Negative finding |
| YA | 30,000 to 80,000 from one competition, self-described as a suggestion | Weak |
| Middle grade | Same single source | Weak |
Details on each in the individual pages linked below.
Why the Gaps Exist
The structural reason is worth understanding, because it explains why searching harder will not help.
Publishers and agents specify how much to send, not how long the book should be. Submission pages say "the first three chapters" or "the first 10,000 words". Those are sample lengths. They look like length guidance and are not, and misreading them is the commonest way invented figures acquire a citation.
Category romance is the exception because it is published to a fixed monthly schedule at fixed extents, so the word count is a genuine production constraint. Harlequin publishes per-imprint figures because it has to.
The SFF awards are the other exception, because an award needs a boundary to sort entries into categories.
Everywhere else, nobody has a reason to publish a number.
The Strongest Negative: Literary Fiction
Worth stating because it is so clean. The Booker Prize's 2026 rules define eligibility as "a work or (as the case may be) works of long-form fiction", and never define the term. The only word count in the entire rules document is administrative: a justification letter of "no more than 250 words".
The National Book Awards likewise use "full-length books of fiction" with no threshold.
So the most prestigious prizes in literary fiction decline to say how long a novel is.
What This Means Practically
Use 40,000 as the floor. Below that you have a novella, which is a real and publishable form with its own markets.
Check the specific publisher or imprint you are targeting. Where a real number exists, it exists there, not in a general table.
Treat circulating ranges as descriptive, not prescriptive. "Fantasy is 90,000 to 120,000" describes what people notice on shelves. No agency or publisher states it.
Worry about length only at the extremes. A 200,000 word debut is a commercial problem. An 85,000 word novel is not, in any genre.
What Deckle Does
The word count in Compile is the manuscript figure, which is the number agents and publishers ask for. It excludes anything you have marked as excluded from compile, so notes, research and a query letter draft do not inflate it.
The estimated page count shown before export translates that into print pages, which is the figure relevant to trim size and spine width.
Per-document counts in the Outliner show where the length actually is, which matters more than the total when a book runs long. See how to cut word count.
Individual Genres
Fantasy · Romance · Thriller · Young adult · Literary fiction · Science fiction · Middle grade · Cosy mystery
Common Mistakes
- Treating a per-genre table as authoritative. No body publishes one.
- Reading "first 10,000 words" as a length guide. That is a sample length.
- Assuming the 40,000 boundary is rigid. The Hugo rules allow 20 percent either way.
- Worrying about 5,000 words. Only the extremes matter commercially.
- Citing a coaching site for a range. That is where every unsourced figure comes from.
FAQ
Q: How long is a novel? A: 40,000 words or more, per both the SFWA and the Hugo Awards rules.
Q: Is there a word count table by genre? A: Not from any authoritative body. Only romance and SFF publish real figures.
Q: Why do so many sites give exact ranges? A: They describe what is typical on shelves. None of it traces to a publisher or agency statement.
Q: What if my book is 130,000 words? A: Long for a debut in most genres, and worth examining structurally, but no rule forbids it.
Q: Does anyone define literary fiction by length? A: No. The Booker Prize uses "long-form fiction" and never defines it.