My friend is a literary agent who mostly works with YA novels, but she told me recently that I should aim for about 75,000 words for my book, which I'm currently speccing out as a romance novel or maybe chick-lit, depending on how the genre-bending shakes out. (Her numbers are 250 words per page, and about 250 pages.)
However, going by the books I've enjoyed most, single-title romances tend to be 350 words per page and 350-375 pages. This comes out to over 100,000 words per book!
I know category romances (Harlequins, Mills & Boon books) are much shorter -- usually about 150 pages and about 50,000 words long -- but are single-title books really that short? To put it another way: what's the accepted wordcount range for a single-title romance novel?