How Long Should a Business Book Be?

Before you embark on your journey to become a professional business author, it’s important to have answers to a few high-level questions. Most business writers focus on critical aspects like who their target audience is and how their book will help readers, but not every author considers how long their book should be—and that’s a bit of a misstep. 

The best business authors beautifully balance well-explained ideas with an appropriate word count. In fact, this is crucial to understanding how to write a business book. Here’s everything you need to know about crafting a book of the ideal length. 

Why your business book’s length matters

Books for business leaders and other professionals vary in length. The ideal word and page counts depend on multiple factors, including the book’s target audience and the complexity of the ideas it presents. For example, if your book is too long, your readers might be overwhelmed and scroll to the next title instead of buying your book. And if it’s too short, you might not be able to fully explain crucial concepts. Further, the length could affect the actual price of your book if you’re selling hard copies, and you don’t want to lose the pricing game just because you added some extra pages. 

In other words, your business book’s length can be the difference between your becoming a successful author-preneur with established thought leadership or the writer of a book that has trouble enticing readers. So how do you avoid this pitfall? Start by considering the average lengths of the books in your genre. 

The average length of business books

Many nonfiction books are between 50,000 and 80,000 words, which translates into around 200 to 300 pages. Since business books fall under the nonfiction umbrella, this is a reasonable place to start. 

Keep in mind, though, that this is just a general suggestion. One of the best ways to determine the ideal length of your business book is to check out what other authors in your field have done. Look at the best business authors’ published titles and see how many pages they are (or, in the case of audiobooks, their runtime). This can provide you with a good gauge of your target audience’s ideal book length—and when you tailor your content to your audience, you set yourself up for more book sales. 

Your book is as unique as you are, so it might not be well suited for an industry-average word count. If your book is much longer, consider sending your draft to a professional manuscript editing service for a thorough assessment of your work and advice on how you might be able to improve it. Just keep in mind that their recommendation might include paring a few things down so the final version is the ideal length. 

How to write your business book to its ideal length

Here are a few guidelines and tips to follow for writing a business book that’s helpful and valuable to your audience while coming in at the right length: 

• Give your message room to flourish. Some ideas are complex and require more words and pages to flesh out, while others can be explained more simply.
• Include visuals. If you feel your draft is too verbose, include images, graphics, or diagrams to provide a visual explanation of your message instead of an overly wordy one. 
• Provide historical context when necessary. Remember: business books are nonfiction works, and sometimes readers’ understanding of your message is enhanced by learning historical background. However, this can be a rabbit hole that eats up a lot of room in your book, so be careful and selective if you choose to include historical information. 
• Don’t add fluff to rack up word count. Focus on quality over quantity every time you work on your book. A shorter book in which every word is crucial can be more valuable than a longer work that’s clearly stretched out with filler to increase the word count. 
• Consider publishing additional volumes. If you find that it’s impossible to clearly communicate your entire message without writing an immensely long business book, consider breaking it down into a few different volumes or an entire series instead of self-publishing one massive work. 

Throughout the writing process, the best business authors look to professional book publishing services to help with elements like word count, structure, flow, and even word usage. So partner with the experts who can take you, your thought leadership, and your business book to the next level. 

Our expert manuscript editing services can help your business book achieve its ideal length!

Your dreams of becoming a professional author are within reach, and we can make your book the best version of itself. Our book editing services cover everything from the developmental edit that’ll help you reign in the word count all the way through the final proofread right before you self-publish. 

Connect with a publishing expert today to get started on the path toward self-publication!