Is my book too short?

DangerMouse27

Crap...was all ready to send my manuscript off to publishers tmrw,countless edits and a re-write here and there.
The only thing is its just 40,000 words.

Is that too short for general adult fiction?

RGDATA!

if you're happy with it, and you've edited it to your liking without considering the word count then it seems like it's time to let someone else have a look -why worry about whether it's "long enough" now? good luck with it.

DangerMouse27

Cheers RGDATA.
Yeah ive had a few people look at it and they like the story and size. It tells its tale well.
Ive seen though that adult fiction tends to be 70,000 words plus.

Leafonthewind

So it's a novella. Nothing wrong with that.

EileenG

One of the great thing about the explosion in e-publishing is that it is now possible to publish and sell much shorter works. In fact, people are much more likely to take a chance on an unknown author if it's a relatively short book, so they are not committing weeks of reading time to something that might not be worth it.

I've certainly bought a lot of short novels and novellas from people I'd never heard of, if the price was right and I liked the sound of the story. I wouldn't buy a huge doorstopper of a novel unless I knew I was going to enjoy it.

Young adult fiction tends to start at 50k, and genre fiction at around 80K.

ThePinkCage

It's the hardest thing in the world to bulk up a novel. All the advice is relevant, but if your original plan was to write a full length novel and promote a traditional novel, there are two things you can do to bulk up.

1. Add more detail to the scenes you already have. It could be that you stinted on description because you didn't want to be too long winded. See if you can add more significant detail about your character, or add depth to the scenes you've created.
2. Add more scenes. Were there scenes you didn't put in because you thought the novel might end up being too long? You could put them back on.

If you've kept notes, they'll give you the extra material. Basically, just see if you can round out your story a bit.

bigsmokewriting

No need to pad out for the sake of padding out, but would suggest getting it up to 60/70k at least before sending it out (unless you're specifically interested in e-publishing, which is the best mode for novellas at the moment - very very very few being published traditionally). Sending an agent or a publisher a 'novel' of 40k is likely to suggest to them that you haven't really done your research and don't understand the market - at that length it's really a novella, especially if aimed at adults (novels for children and teens are a little shorter).

And as others have said, nothing wrong with novellas - but if your aim is to publish traditionally, you do need to take the market into account.

Makeup_Jeans

Dangermouse if you are happy with it - go for it.

You remind me of my oh and as I always say to him - Its quality that matters not quantity.