What Makes a Book a Novel?

When writing a book, an author usually takes into account what length they are considering. Why? Well, there can be several reasons why. Knowing what length one is shooting for gives an author a goal as far as plot. The author also takes into consideration readers because some like a short, quick read because they don’t have much spare time to read. Others may prefer a novel length so they can really get into the plot and take several hours to read it or in some cases they may be willing to spend two or three days to finish a lengthy story.

Then there is one more consideration, and that is price. The longer the book, the greater the price…usually. And that is reasonable. Why? Because greater length means more time has been spent on the plot, the development of the characters, and adding more descriptive scenes.

In writing Elizabeth Bennet’s Bad Days, I didn’t really write to length. I wrote what I felt like was the complete story. It turned out to be 38,295 words, if I am remembering correctly, and 174 pages.

So, according to some scales, EBBD is a novella, just shy of a novel which is 40,000.

I will admit that I find the rating scales, although a little bit different, were rather interesting. This is the first one I found.

Short Story – 10,000 to 20,000 words

Novelette – 21,000 to 30,000 words

Novella – 31,000 to 40,000 words

Novel – 40,000 + words

Most readers would probably have considered EBBD a novel because all it lacked by that scale was about 1500 words.

The other scale was a bit different when it came to what constituted a novel as it rated books from 10,000-40,000 words as novels. So, taking into consideration that EBBD could be a novella or a novel, depending on how you look at it, I was pleased. That was until someone called it a novelette which put it in a category with only about 50% of the words that it actually has.

So, I am going to publish a second Edition of EBBD and make sure that I have 40,000+ words. I have several places that I can expand the story, and I will add more to the first Epilogue as well. I plan on getting that published by the end of the month.

I am also putting my Pride and Prejudice variations on sale through the end of December as well as my other Regency romance books. Keep that in mind if you are wanting to add to your library.

Enjoy the romance.