How Many Words Is a Novel, Novella or Short Story?

The most widely cited definition comes from the science fiction and fantasy awards: a novel is 40,000 words or more. The SFWA’s Nebula Awards and the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Awards both draw the line there, and they split shorter fiction into novellas, novelettes and short stories at 17,500 and 7,500 words. Publishers then set their own lengths for the books they buy, which are usually well above the 40,000-word minimum. To see where your own draft falls, paste it into the word counter.

Word counts by type of fiction

Form	Word count	Double-spaced manuscript pages*
Short story	under 7,500	under 30
Novelette	7,500 to 17,500	30 to 70
Novella	17,500 to 40,000	70 to 160
Novel	40,000 or more	160 or more

*At 250 words per page: 12 pt Times New Roman, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, as in the words to pages converter.

The Nebula rules state the bands precisely: a short story is “fewer than 7,500 words”, a novelette “at least 7,500 words but fewer than 17,500 words”, a novella “at least 17,500 words but fewer than 40,000 words”, and a novel “40,000 words or more”. So a story of exactly 7,500 words is a novelette, and one of exactly 40,000 is a novel.

The Hugo definitions in the WSFS Constitution use the same numbers: Best Novel is for a story “of forty thousand (40,000) words or more”, Best Novella for one “between seventeen thousand five hundred (17,500) and forty thousand (40,000) words”, Best Novelette between 7,500 and 17,500 words, and Best Short Story for “less than seven thousand five hundred (7,500) words”.

Why award rules are the reference point

There is no law or standard that defines a novel. Most of what you read about novel length is advice from agents and editors, and it varies by genre, by publisher and over time. The award rules are different: they are written down, they give exact numbers, and they are applied every year to decide which category a story competes in.

They also show that the lines are not perfectly rigid. Section 3.2.10 of the WSFS Constitution lets the Worldcon Committee move a story into a more appropriate category “provided that the length of the story is within twenty percent (20%) of the new category limits”. A 37,000-word story could, in principle, be placed with the novels instead of the novellas. For your own planning, treat the boundaries as clear but not absolute.

The terms “novelette” and “novella” are most common in science fiction and fantasy. Literary magazines and general publishers often just say “short story” for anything up to magazine length and “novella” or “short novel” for what lies between that and a full-length book.

What publishers ask for

Publishers state lengths in their submission guidelines, and those numbers are the ones that decide whether a manuscript fits. They change, so always check the current guidelines before you submit.

Harlequin is a good example because it publishes exact targets for each of its series lines. As of October 2026 its guidelines include:

Harlequin line	Requested length
Harlequin Presents	50,000 words
Harlequin Romance	50,000 words
Harlequin Medical Romance	50,000 words
Love Inspired	55,000 words
Harlequin Intrigue	55,000 to 60,000 words
Harlequin Special Edition	70,000 words
Harlequin Historical	70,000 to 75,000 words
Afterglow by Harlequin	minimum 75,000 words
Love Inspired Trade	85,000 to 100,000 words

Even within one publisher, books range from 50,000 to 100,000 words depending on the line. Short fiction contests work the same way. The Writers of the Future contest, for example, accepts stories “up to but not exceeding 17,000 words”, which covers short stories and novelettes but not novellas.

The practical rule: decide where you want to submit, read that publisher’s or contest’s guidelines, and write to their number. The general bands above tell you what kind of work you have; the guidelines tell you whether it fits.

Novel length in pages and reading time

Writers often think in pages, and readers in hours. Here is how the common lengths convert, using the site’s tools. Pages use 12 pt Times New Roman with 1-inch margins; reading time uses 238 words per minute (the reading time calculator default) and reading aloud 183 words per minute.

Words	Single-spaced pages	Double-spaced pages	Silent reading	Read aloud
7,500	15	30	31 min 31 sec	40 min 59 sec
17,500	35	70	1 h 14 min	1 h 36 min
40,000	80	160	2 h 48 min	3 h 39 min
50,000	100	200	3 h 30 min	4 h 33 min
80,000	160	320	5 h 36 min	7 h 17 min
100,000	200	400	7 h	9 h 6 min

These are manuscript pages, the way a draft looks in a word processor. A printed book’s page count depends on its trim size, font, margins and how much dialogue it has, so a 320-page manuscript will not necessarily be a 320-page book. In a monospaced font such as Courier New, the converter gives 175 words per double-spaced page, so 80,000 words is about 457 pages.

For speech, the words to minutes converter lets you pick a slower or faster pace than 183 words per minute.

How to check your manuscript’s length

1. Count the words. Paste the manuscript, or one chapter at a time, into the word counter. It counts any run of characters that contains a letter or digit, so “don’t”, “well-known” and “3.5” are one word each, and a lone dash is not a word. Word processors use similar rules, though small differences are possible; the guide how to count words in Google Docs and Word shows where those programs keep their counts.
2. Leave out what is not the story. Title page, dedication, acknowledgments and author notes are not part of the story length. Count from the first line of chapter one to the last line of the ending.
3. Find the category. Compare the total with the table at the top: under 7,500 is a short story, 7,500 to 17,500 a novelette, 17,500 to 40,000 a novella, and 40,000 or more a novel.
4. Compare with your target. If you are submitting, compare the count with the publisher’s or contest’s stated length, not with the general bands.
5. Convert to pages if you need to. Enter the count in the words to pages converter, choose Words → pages, and pick the Font, Size and Spacing your manuscript uses.

Planning a draft by word count

A word target is easier to manage when you break it down. For a 70,000-word novel:

Split	Words each
20 chapters	3,500
25 chapters	2,800
30 chapters	2,333
3 acts (25% / 50% / 25%)	17,500 / 35,000 / 17,500

None of these splits is a rule; chapter lengths in real novels vary a lot. They are useful as checkpoints: if chapter five is 9,000 words and you planned 3,500, you know early that the book will run long or that the chapter needs splitting.

The same arithmetic works for a daily goal. A 70,000-word draft written at 1,000 words a day takes 70 days; at 500 words a day, 140 days. Paste each day’s work into the word counter to keep a running total.