Word lengths of popular YA books right now--Part 1

On one of those evenings when I was a) holding a baby and could only type with one hand, b) still mulling over a revision point, and c) too tired for creativity, anyhow, I decided to check out just what normal word lengths are for YA books at the moment. Every so often on writing web sites this discussion comes up, and some people are very die-hard on how YA MUST absolutely fall between 40-60k words! And how 100k is a death sentence! Or at the other end of the spectrum, 40k is way too short! I have even seen agents voice strong opinions for the shorter side (ie, 50k), but that isn't what I see in the bookstore. My sense was that actual, published fantasy edged up close to 100k on a fairly common basis, that contemporary realistic stories were closer to 50k, and historical somewhat in between. In other words, it depends on what it is. I decided to check this out with real facts, however. For anyone who is interested, here is what I found out:
 

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Word lengths of popular YA books right now--Part II

Moving along with the 60s on down...

 

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Word lengths of popular YA books right now--Part III

So--my conclusions are that I was right that fantasy from 70-100k is normal. But I was surprised at the number of contemporary novels in the 70-80k range. While it's still totally fine to have a book around 50-60k, it seems that not just fantasy is longer; contemporary can be, too.

I was also surprised at the number of shorter than normal books out there. I was expecting the really short category because of the recent upsurge in verse novels, but it looks as if the shorter prose YA novel--a sort of distilled reading experience--is also a thriving subset of the total.

So--you can't throw out blanket statements on what is "normal" for YA lengths these days. But you can see if your book falls around the bulge for its kind of book. There are award-winning books at all levels, and bestsellers at all levels as well. The issue, of course, isn't the number of words. It's finding the right ones for YOUR story.

See addendum.