How Many Words Make a Christian Book?

By Donald L. Hughes, Editor, www.ChristianWritingToday.com
Special to ASSIST News Service

If you think Christian books are getting thinner, you're right. But that may well just be a reflection of our times as the Internet, television and gadgets like smart phones vie for our time.

Christians are still an information hungry group, but like others we increasingly want it dished up in smaller portions.

Various books of the Bible are very short, of course, and they have transformed the world. Genesis is 40,092 words, Matthew 24,946 words and Romans is 9,913 words, all in the King James Version. The trend is toward shorter books in the Christian publishing world.

The epic War and Peace (1869) by Russian author Leo Tolstoy is 565,146 words in the English edition. American author John Steinbeck used 179,148 words to craft the classic Grapes of Wrath (1939). The Di Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown is 138,380 words.

Christian fiction is light-weight by comparison. The grandfather of modern Christian fiction, In His Steps by Charles M. Sheldon, is 82,233 words long.

The Left Behind Series (original books, not including prequel) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins started out strong, and the first volume (Left Behind) had 109,519 words. Over time, the word count diminished and Volume 8 (The Mark) contained only 85,341 words, and the last volume, number 16 (Kingdom Come), dwindled to 77,776 words.

The recently released The Noticer (2009) by Andy Andrews barley breaks the novel barrier at 40,454. Historically, books 40,000 words or less have been considered novellas, not novels.

Romance novels are generally expected to be around 100,000 words long. Among Christian writers, Francine River's Redeeming Love (2007) is 138,216 words. Love's Abiding Joy (2003) by Janette Oke, aimed at a younger audience, is half that length at 65,668 words.

The range is wide open when it comes to non-fiction books in the Christian world. Rick Warren's first big publishing success, The Purpose Driven Church (1995) was composed of 103,208 words. The perennial favorite by Gary Chapman, the Five Love Languages (1995), comes in at only 46,145 words.

Publishers ultimately decide what length is proper for a particular book, and it's based on marketing considerations, not literary factors. As the editors at McGraw Hill say, "Adhering to the page length specified in your contract is important to the publishing process. A book that is much smaller than competing books might be perceived to have less value, a lower price notwithstanding; one that is much longer might need to be priced too high. And the publisher's estimates of manufacturing costs and sales are directly linked to the length of your book."

Are there some guidelines? Here are the traditional word count ranges for various categories of books.

Nonfiction book - 25,000- 150,000 words
Fiction - Novella - 18,000-40,000
Fiction - Novel - 40,000 - 150,000
Young Adult books - 25,000 - 75,000
Children's books - 250 - 1000

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "It is not length of life, but depth of life." The same idea applies to books. If you're considering writing a Christian book you need to take the new realities of publishing into consideration.

Readers want a shorter, more powerful and more riveting message in books they buy today.

Donald L. Hughes is the editor of ChristianWritingToday.com, an online magazine about Christian writing and publishing. He has academic degrees from Azusa Pacific University, Wheaton Graduate School and Princeton Theological Seminary. He has been in Christian media ministry for over 30 years.