Chris A. Baird | February 17, 2020
How Long Should Your Self-Published Book Be?

A question that came up recently was, how long should your self-published book be? This is a common question when you are writing books or having other people write books for you.

The key issue is you are trying to figure out what exactly the right length of your ebook is going to be to get the most sales, in order to make your readers happy, you need to know when it's enough.

So, for example, when you're writing and the entire time you are wondering, is it 5,000 words, 10,000, 20,000, or is it 30,000 words? Maybe you've written too much or perhaps too little.

Check out this related article: What Is A Good Word Count?

Deciding Based On What Your Readers Want

The problem is if you are writing too much, then you're going to have an issue with your ideal readers. Wearing out and deciding this is just too long and they will complain. But if you write too little, then your readers will say they didn't get enough value out of the ebook.

And you might think that longer is better.  But that's not necessarily the case. Because if you are trying to make a point, you are trying to get your point across.

Then the length that you're writing is critical. To make sure that your readers themselves maybe they just simply want an answer to a question. Whether your ebook is in the nonfiction area or if it's in the fiction.

Check out this related article: Where Should A New Writer Seek To Publish Short Fiction?

They might want to have that extra-long length in order to thoroughly go through your whole story. But I have seen books before that just simply go way too long and cross over that thing.

So, I'm going to help answer this question for you. How long should your self-published book be? The answer is actually very simple, so there are three things you are going to need to do to solve this one.

3 Easy Steps You Can Do

The first one is the top-selling books in the genre that you're writing it. So if you're writing a book in terms of a diet, you are going to look to see what are the other books that are doing that. Or maybe you're writing a book on some sort of fantasy stories like Lord of the Rings, or something along those lines. 

Then, what you are going to do is go to Kindle. You are going to look at the top-selling books in that specific genre. Or for that keyword under Kindle, type in the top of the address. You are going to let it tell you for the top-selling books or the bestsellers in those categories. 

How long should your self-published book be? What is the average page length so you are going enough?

Check out this related article: What Are The Minimum Amount Of Words For Paperback Books?

Number two, you are going to get the exact page links for all of them. You are going to average them together. Maybe the top 20 books in your genre, and figure out for those the bestsellers in that genre.

Now, the tool that I like to use is Kindle Spy in order to do this. Because it's so simple. You can just type it in and then you sort by the overall sales rank for the book.

Which is a fantastic way of getting straight into making sure that the book that you're selling is going to be in the same length.

Then, you passed the third step. You are just going to match the link so you'll know how long should your self-published book be? Based upon what other people are doing with theirs that are getting the sales.

Obviously, readers are giving these books good reviews and high ratings because they are not dissatisfied with them. So, the length is exactly the right length.

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