: Re: How long is a single-title romance novel supposed to be? My friend is a literary agent who mostly works with YA novels, but she told me recently that I should aim for about 75,000 words for

@Frith254

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Your novel should be as long as it needs to be. Not shorter, not longer. Too vague? Well, that's writing ;)

Honestly I think we already answered this question, but I can't find it. To summarize out of my head:

A novel starts around 50,000 words. That's a widely accepted figure no matter what genre you write in.
Write, don't care about word limits. If you think all the time "Oh, I have to add something here, do that to reach [enter arbitrary word limit here]" then you only will achieve one thing: messing up your story
Check the market. If you really want to know what's the general word length of a romance novel, look at what's published. Do not stop at the books you enjoyed. Assuming that word count has anything to do with it, is a sure road to a writing disaster.
If a literary agent tells you to aim for 75,000 words, it is very likely that she told you a mean value (surprise: 75,000 is in the middle between 50,000 and 100,000).

So the ultimate answer to your question is:

The accepted word count range for a single-title romance novel is whatever your readers buy.

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