What Is the Ideal Fantasy Novel Length?

From time to time, I receive enquiries from authors who have written a really long novel.

I consider really long to be anything over 130K words.

So what is the ideal fantasy novel length if you are a debut author wanting to find an agent or self-publish?

For established authors with a large audience, that can be fine. But for new authors looking to find an agent or self-publish, a very long novel comes with several problems attached:

• It will almost certainly receive an automatic rejection from literary agents

• It doesn't demonstrate an awareness of market

• It's a very big ask for readers

• There's a minor red flag here as the majority of long books by debut authors could be edited down

For high fantasy or second-world SF, agents will typically consider anything up to around 120K–130K words. Anything higher will almost certainly receive an automatic rejection. There are several reasons for this:

• The cost of printing is high at the moment, so agents are less likely even than before to take a punt on a novel with a high word count

• While some novels need more space – there are some stories that can't be any shorter – the vast majority of longer novels by debut authors could be edited down, so, as mentioned, a long novel is a minor red flag suggesting the author has likely not heavily edited and pared down their work

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Rumors about the ideal fantasy novel length

There's also a literary agent rumor doing the rounds! This rumor is that manuscripts longer than 100K words are being automatically rejected. Simon Spanton from Angry Robot Books partly addressed this rumor in his Q&A at the Cymera Writers' Conference in Edinburgh (November 2024).

He made a series of similar points to the above. Some stories are very long and that's fine. But for new authors querying a novel, if the novel is very long, the chances are high that the author hasn't done their research on industry expectations and that the text could be revised down and shortened. His advice: Save the long novel for later in your career.

Simon also underscored that in traditional publishing, the high cost of printing since the pandemic means that slightly longer books, for instance, those over 120K words, have significantly reduced chances of finding an agent.

So while 100K words doesn't mean an automatic rejection, there is a sweet spot for novel length—say, 70K words to 110K words—that does increase your chances. There would be slightly more leeway for genres like adult high fantasy, of course.

What about self-publishing?

A similar point applies to self-publishing. It makes little commercial sense to have a very long first book, because you could make more money by splitting it into installments, and a long book is a big ask from a reader—they might spend twenty or thirty hours reading it! If you're just writing for yourself or for your friends and family, these concerns don't matter, of course.

Save the long book for when you have a big audience and devoted readership.

And if you have a tendency to write long novels but don't enjoy marketing, then self-publishing may not be for you – there are literally millions of unread books available to buy on Amazon written by authors who shied away from marketing, or who didn't realize the importance of it.

How long is your novel? Could it be any shorter? Let me know your thoughts!

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