YA question

First hit when you Google “What is the word count for a YA Novel”

https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-bl … itive-post

Info on the author of that article:
http://www.chucksambuchino.com/?page_id=5

I think the word count for the first Harry Potter book at 75k is the upper limit, and that is only because it is not completely within the YA genre and draws the older who tend to want all those details in a novel of 100k+. I would say the length of a novella 20-50k for YA. (For all we know J.K. Rowling stretched her thin story to appease the publishing industry). Novellas are thought to be unwanted by publishers for the only reason that it has been uneconomical to print them. In an age of digitizing, that is irrelevant. Consider also that of a 100k novel only 30k is used to make a 2-hr movie, and that is plenty to have a story with all the plot and character basis points. Philip K. Dick's Minority Report - 14k; Dickens'  A Christmas Carol 29k  Massive tomes like Anna Karenina and War and Peace have not and cannot be made into successful movies, only rather into artsy BBC/PBS TV series, not thought to be for a YA audience.

No. From a literary point of view.  War and Peace is incredibly dull to read if the words padding it out are read and not skipped over. Unfortunately, the 40+ generations have no idea that a short-form book should be read more like a short story in which nearly every word counts as having meaning, and they will just skim over out of habit from reading 75k+ novels that have plenty of padding, so that older than the YA audience has a cultural inheritance based on the economics of printing books, not on the value of quality of writing.  I would say historical novels and character-driven and theme-driven literary fiction (like Atlas Shrugged) are exceptions, not for YA audience in any case, but also make lousy movies, Gone with the Wind the exception.