What is the average length of a YA horror novel?

Question

I am writing a YA horror novel and I was wondering how long it should be? (publishing companies go by words rather than pages). I don't want to make it too long, but I don't want to make it too short either. A normal sized adult novel, for example, is about 50,000 words long.

Thanks!!!

Answer 1

50,000-90,000 is average for YA

80,000 to 120,000 for most other (adult) novels.

Answer 2

My sister-in-law used to read all those YA horror novels by Christopher Pike. (And here all this time I thought he was just the first captain of the starship Enterprise... Shows how much I know.) Those books tended to be really short -- I'd say no more than 50,000 words. That's pretty much what I recall for ones by other authors too, from my days working in a book store.