How long should a chapter be?

I just finished reading JOHN KREMER’s “1001 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR BOOKS”

Since I’m often asked, “How long should a chapter be?” I was excited to read that this is one of the things “you need to consider to make your book more readable, and therefore, more consumable.”

Kremer goes on to write:

“If I look at that first chapter and see that it is twenty or more pages in length, in all likelihood I won’t buy it. Why? Because it looks like it’s just too much work to read. You want people to feel a sense of progress as they read your book and if your chapters are so long they discourage reading you’re making a mistake.

“Similarly, many people like to do a little reading before bed. Most like to consume a book a chapter at a time. If I pick up a book and glance at the next chapter and see it’s very long then chances are I’ll decide not to read any further that night. So I’m not consuming your book as quickly as you would want me to.

“A book like this suffers from what I call ‘consumption obstruction.’ You’re far better off having three chapters that are each around seven pages long than a single chapter that is twenty or more pages. As funny as it may sound, people are far more likely to read three or four seven-page chapters than a single twenty-plus-page chapter.”

Interesting comments to consider, don’t you think?

A similar question often arises: “How long should my scene be?”

In today’s binge-watching-Netflix world, we want our entertainment to be fast and easy to absorb. You want to take this into consideration when writing memoir, as well.

Some authors will put several relevant scenes together to construct and chapter. Others will make each scene its own separate chapter.

Best-selling fiction author James Patterson is known for his fast-paced reading style. In one of his novels, a chapter I read was only one page in length!

It’s truly about the characters and the story-telling, not the number of words or the number of scenes in a chapter.

In the end, the choice is yours.

But I believe shorter, as John Kremer advises, works better.