YA / Action / Comedy - 180-400 Suspense Thriller / Horror / Mystery - 300-700 Epic / World Building - 400-1000 Most LitRPG stories seem to chop up lore, game mechanics, and ditch entirely the real world, so the stories get even shorter and more streamlined. Its an efficient little genre, and if most people have developed their worlds like I have, they are constantly retooling / tweaking stuff as they go.
I've heard of Apocalypse booking being shorter and in less demand. Something about market saturation and trad publishers not wanting to take the chance. Well, that's why we have indie publishers! Interesting about D. Rus. His books are about 260-300 pages on average. I've found series with short books and series with long books. So... not sure the number of books really matters with LitRPG.
@Dustin Tigner if you have to choose between 400 pages and releasing close to every month, pick the monthly schedule (or as close as you can get to it). Amazon has a list that's called something like Hot New Releases or something like that. The words New Releases are in there. Anyway, books on that list (that were released in the previous 30 days) are given slightly preferential treatment when it comes to visibility. If you have a new book popping up in that list every 40-60 days it's going to really help your series. I'm not sure if you've read Glynn Stewart or not, but he's tearing up the best seller/midlist charts on Amazon simply because he cranks out books so quickly. Don't get me wrong. He's a competent writer and some of his series are very good. However, not all of his stuff is very good. That being said, it all sells fairly well and I think a big part of this is simply because he's always releasing something new. I mean look at all of us. Seriously. Everyone in this post speak up. How many crappy and absolutley horrible LitRPG books have you read simply because you were looking for a new title within this genre? It's awesome when you find the good stuff, but there isn't enough of the good stuff to keep me busy. So, I lower my standards and read stuff that I wouldn't put up with if it were in one of the other genres I read simply because I'm wanting to read something that has to do with LitRPG. So, crank those books out. If you can beat down some of the competition in the quality game, I'll be picking your books instead of... well, I won't mention any names.
I'd say 80% of the LitRPG books I've read are in the 400 page area. I'm making my way through D. Rus' catalog as well and his stuff is shorter, but he does seem to be the exception.
Haha, let's see how an attachment works here. I originally stopped at 30 titles, though added more so we have more data. Pretty interesting thus far. If someone wants to add more titles and data to the list, feel free! Okay... attaching an Excel document doesn't work. So, plan B! Google Sheets. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NB6UDznAIfhYSbhxuSMyOa41pVelrT8hh3Dp1mRAUAc/edit?usp=sharing I don't use Google Sheets much, though the information looks correct. If you can't access it, let me know. If you want to add to the document, send me your email address (I think?), and I'll give you access. I'll add my thoughts to a new comment.
There's a sharing option in Google Docs that allows you to choose "Anyone with Link" and then you can choose what those people can do. They can either "View" or "Edit" the data.
I was initially confused by your numbers, though now realize those are page numbers. I was like, 400 words aren't going to cut it man... haha. My stories are more thriller / action focused. I realized that my pacing and chapter lengths are generally quicker and shorter. I think aiming for 300 pages is a good goal.
I just looked over the options again. I suppose that would work, though in this case, anyone can now find it. Those who want to contribute can let me know. Looks like I can add their email address and give them edit permissions. I'll just leave it like that, unless you guys are having a problem access it.
Oh. One other thing. I believe that the way people present game mechanics, notifications, etc. balloons page counts. I mean some people list damage taken, how it was inflicted, etc. multiple times during a single battle. It's easy to fill an entire page with that stuff.
I was able to find it and view it simply by clicking on the link. I couldn't edit the data, but that's probably for the best. You don't want someone hosing your entire sheet by accident.
I was crunching the numbers with how long it would take to put out a 120k book. If I drafted 10k words a day, that's 12 days. Then a continuity/add/remove edit of 10k a day, another 12 days. Then a Grammarly proofread, probably 20k a day. That's 30 days, and I haven't worked with Alphas, haven't sent it to an editor (besides myself), don't have a cover designed (which I plan to paint my own), and haven't done anything with prepping my marketing efforts (newsletter, ads, ad designs, reader magnets, PR, social groups, etc.). A 120k book a month would be hard. A 80k-90k book is much more realistic. And, I hope my books are good. Alpha readers thus far have really liked what I've put out. With that said, I am pretty new to this, so I have a ton to learn.
On the topic of stats and stuff, I'm only on the first book, but I really like the way D. Rus is doing his data. The boxes are super simple and easy to read in one page. Whereas others formatted like the Awaken Online series are way too bulky for me to process with my particular kindle settings. edit: I quoted the wrong post >.<
Yeah, I have very little of that type of information. The main thing I present is kill experience and credits earned. This is often summarized after the action so the numbers don't get in the way. Though that's a really good point. I wonder how much of their book is made up of stat numbers. 5%, 10%, 20%?
I was reading a LitRPG and every time the stats came up, I had to click the image/table and scroll it to read the information. It was pretty annoying, so I skipped the information. I listened to Awaken Online, so I'm not sure how he did it. I may have to take a gander.
It's difficult to read these page estimates and get a feel for how long your work should be. A. LitRPG may have many tables/images for stats, or very little/none. B. Kindle page estimates range from 195 words per page to 400 words per page. The safe estimate is about 250-275. In general, I think over 300 pages is a good goal to have. I sorted the data by reviews and grouped the rows by 10. It does appear the the more popular (more reviews) LitRPG are longer (average of 463 pages). The shortest book average of 335 pages, did the worst. I tried to throw out outliers (such as a book that hasn't been published yet, though is the longest book). The Land was in the top 10. It's shorter for this group, though we need to understand the Kong bought up the LitRPG name and has been using it for marketing ever sense. AlterWorld is also a shorter book. We need to understand that this was one of the first LitRPG labeled books, and has had a long time to receive reviews. If you took these shorter books out of the top 10, you're looking at ~490 pages. How many words is that? Anywhere from 95,000 (195 words per page), to 147k (300 words per page). Funny enough, my estimated length for my first book is 147k. Hmmm...
Really long books are more likely to put me off than shorter books. I only have a small amount of time to read every week, and I don't want to spend weeks or months reading a single book. A long book is more likely to be put on hold until I am between writing books and can devote many hours in the day to read. Heck, even before I started writing I shied away from very long books/series in favor of shorter books. I personally, as a READER, prefer the 60-70k length. As a writer, I prefer to write around 100k.
As someone who always WAY OVERTHINKS things in my personal life, let me tell you that right now you're way too fixated on length. Don't worry about it. It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it. Your goal should be to write a great book-- not a long one.
