For traditional publishing, debut adult novels target 80,000–100,000 words. Genre fiction varies: romance 70–90k, fantasy and sci-fi 90–130k, thrillers 70–90k. YA targets 50–80k, middle grade 30–50k.
Outside the expected range, query letters get harder treatment — too short reads as undercooked, too long as unedited. See our word counts of famous novels for benchmarks against published work.