Digital Books and Book Length

Harry Potter’s book were famous not only for their success but also for the sheer number of pages per book as from the 4^th volume. Before Harry Potter, manuscript for young adults were supposed to range in the 50k to 80k words. After Harry Potter, for a while, the over 80K words became the norm and shorter books by previously unpublished writers had better fill up to be considered.

Then came the digital revolution and the ever growing use of Print on Demand (POD) by publishers to reduce their costs.

The digital explosion saw a sudden increase in the sales of short stories, sold individually by self-published writers. Authors like Declan Conner even turned it into a selling argument by launching a series called Lunch Break Thrillers, meaning each story is short enough to be read during lunch break.

The new industry of ePublishers, specializing in publishing digital books only to limit cost and maximize profit, both for authors and publisher, created a new model, by which books have to prove their mettle digitally first before gaining access to the print market. This means again reducing costs as only successful digital books get printed, and then on a POD model, eliminating both stacking books and having to pulp unsold copies.

Other ePublishers provide print option from the beginning, also through a POD system. This is where the length of the manuscript plays an essential role. The cost of producing a book for POD begins to climb when passing the 300 pages limit. However, the mark up on the book price does not follow suit. This means publishing a manuscript over 300 pages long reduces the margin for the publisher.

In the meantime, fiction books are now divided into the following categories according to their word count.

+ Under 10,000 is a short story
+ 7,500 through 25,000 is a novelette
+ 20,000 through 50,000 is a novella; some think novellas are the optimum size for ebook novels today
+ 50,000 through 120,000 is a novel; some say 50,000 is the magic number separating a novella from a novel
+ Some think 60,000 through 80,000 is the current optimal ebook size
+ 110,000 plus is an epic (and likely requires being spread out over multiple volumes)
+ 120,000 and higher is excessive for novels from anyone but already well-known authors

Counting words rather than pages avoids confusion as, in digital books, the number of word per page in a digital book varies greatly according to the format chosen, i.e., counting the number of pages based on large font would considerably increase the page numbers though it would definitely not change the length of the story …

So, when writing a book, keep in mind that the word count might be a defining factor in the success of the book.