How long is a novel?

As aspiring novellists we always receive conflicting pieces of advice. ‘A book should be as long as it needs to be,’ is always a good one, but it’s also generally sound advice that, ‘first time novellists should aim for a concise book.’

A novel can be 50,000 words or 250,000 words, but 80,000 words is a reasonable length in non-genre publishing. In science fiction and fantasy, however, novels tend to be a little longer because – for starters – there’s all that world-building to cram in. So in SF/F a reasonably short novel might be 100,000 words or even 120,000 words.

So back in the days when I was with my first agent, CW, when an early version of Empire of Dust climbed to 240,000 words I knew it was too long for a first novel. I edited it down to 180,000 words and told CW that it was finished…