Preferably not less than about 20,000 words or much more than 100,000 (most novels are around 60-120,000 words). If you feel your book is too short we’ll advise you on how it can be developed. Very long books (much over 100,000 words) cause problems, because they may cost so much per copy to print and distribute in small numbers (on top of the increased editing costs) that the retail price will be pushed up to a level which buyers won’t pay. For this reason, if sales are important to you, we strongly suggest keeping your book reasonably short.