Maybe it depends on the number of pages or how difficult it is to read??
Light novel has some art in it, like "x kissed y" might have an accompanying art in the next page
(￣∇￣")
eh actually it's more like the difference of term in japanese. "light novel" is what the japanese call a story with a limited number of words, comparable to a chaptered "short story" everywhere else in the world.
novel, is as everyone knows is a lengthy book, spanning for like 60k words or more.
Word count maybe.
i want to add that the difference from the usual short story and a light novel is an LN almost always have a few illustration inserts (sometimes in the form of paneled pages... i've read one like that before) commissioned to mangakas, thus it's associated to the manga/anime culture.
Ok, thank you, now it makes sense.
This is something I don't get: What's the difference between Novel and Light novel?