Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. I have tried searching the words word count plus the title of a novel, like the lovely bones, and all i get is the word count of essays and articles about the book in question, not for the book itself. I put both the word count on mine and the number of pages, being the word count divided by 330, which is the number of words on a typical paperback page. Once you have decided what type of book you are writing, which genre you are writing in and the approximate word count, you can then consider which of two ways you will approach your writing. Are you wondering what the word count for your book should be. For paperbacks you get 2550 lines per page, with 35 being a good average. While a general guideline is one page is 500 words single spaced or 250 words double spaced, this is a ballpark figure. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. These books can have as many as 3000 words and may have pages. The popular book the noticer 2009 by andy andrews barely breaks the novel barrier at 40,454 words without the readers guide that was added to pad the book. Picture story books for older children between the ages of 6 and 10 include more text with each picture.
From these numbers, we can establish some guidelines. Average word count in a book book editing services. All of these are average book word count ranges and should not be taken as the definitive word count you must reach in your book. They start on 1 when they should start on 4 then skip to 5 and show the rest of the document as page 1. Length of a book is typically associated with its sizespecifically page countleading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length. To be picked up by a traditional publisher, my manuscript needs to fall in a similar wordcount window. However if youre curious to see what the average word count is for standard genres, check out the breakdown in the article. The typical book s words per page count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. We all know there are exceptions, but i wouldnt count on being one. Discover what size your book should be and if thats comparable to the standard book sizes in publishing. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. On average, how long is a childrens book for children.
Its okay, its a disease and well get through it together. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. In 2015, the drop resumed as the average fell to 345. Most adult books are about 90,000 words, and no longer than 100,000 words unless youre jk rowling. Many, yes, but there are exceptions due to the speed at which the narrator talks. When the final work is printed for sale and published, the number of words per page will differ. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. In other words, if i had a formula that gave numwords minus 19 words of title page, that would work.
With longer books, you can get a rough count by adding up the number of words on an average page and multiplying by the total number of pages. When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12yearolds and could maybe be considered tween, using the term upper middle grade is advisable. Still, if you have any feedback id love to hear it. Word count signals to people what kind of book theyre dealing with. Only if youre a major celebrity can you blow right through that word count and just keep going. Having said all that, there are a number of conventions regarding word count. This is good as far as it goes and it is quite simple, but we all already know how to do this. Amazon estimates a page count in an ebook to be around 187 words. Standard novel word count according to its genre here are the average novel word counts in the top five genres in the book publishing industry in no particular order.
Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read. Different books and publishers have different layouts for their pages. Word count for novels and books is something i dont think about too often until i travel to a writers conference, and then someone asks a simple, innocent question. This number can vary depending on if youre writing dialogue or how short each. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. By using these three options to more accurately define your writing, the words per page calculator should provide a better estimate on how many words you need to write to fill a page. Middle grade is from 20,000 55,000, depending on the subject matter and age range, and the word count of these books has been trending up in recent years.
Does this mean that every chapter must end up somewhere in this range. Readers looking for a good beachread in the mystery section will not likely gravitate towards a 1,000page book. This article suggests that essentially, it should be as long as it needs to be, meaning dont look at the word count, just get the story out then edit. To find out this word count information, you simply input the url of the websites page for which you need to know the number of words and the calculator will tell you exactly how many are on that particular page. How many chapters will you need before you reach your target word count. Use these numbers as a baseline for your writing goals.
The truth is the number of words per page depends on a variety of factors such as the type of font, the font size, spacing elements, margin spacing, and paragraph length to name a few. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. Listed under the inside this book section on a books amazon page following product details, text stats reveals not only how many pages the. On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. Before you decide your average chapter length, its a good idea to think about. If youre curious about reading levels, word count and page ranges of various books, offers a useful featuretext stats. It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in general, 250300 words per page. This will give you a rough estimate of the word count. The best way to tell for sure is to decide what size book you want the answer for paper b.
To get an idea of what your book will look like you need to match the number of words per page on your word processing page to the finished printed page. In north america, the standard used by editorial staff in figuring word count is 250 words per page, 10 words per line using a 12 pt. But 75% of our tour stops are engaging with kids ages 812, or grades 26. Calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. You must provide an accurate word count per page or by document when you are submitting a literary project. That being said you can usually assume about 250 words per a printed page. Academic books might put 600 words on a page with works of reference squeezing in words. Most memoirs need to be in the 70,000 to 100,000word range. For manuscripts, the answer is about 250300 words per page if it is doublespaced. Books with much shorter sections become bestsellers all the time. Line count varies depending on page size, font size, etc. These questions made us fill the need of a book page count. Some use 250 words per page, but 330 is closer to reality and gives a reader a good idea of book.
But the word count of a chapter matters if you want your story to flow right. Search for word count totals in books word counters. Every book is different and for any suggested word or page count you see, you are likely to encounter several popular fantasy books that are outside. I recommend staying within or close to the recommended word count for your age categorygenre unless youve received a lot of feedback verifying it needs every word or doesnt need more if youre low. The figure was found through looking at a number of books text stats, until brave new worlds 64,531 word count landed in the exact center of all books 50% of books have fewer words and 50% of books have more words. Because it allows me to check out length for published books in my genre. If youre new to selfpublishing on amazon and wondering, just how much should i write for my kindle book. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. Aug 05, 2019 all of these are average book word count ranges and should not be taken as the definitive word count you must reach in your book. Once you know what your book will be about, its time to start planning the structure of the story. In the opposite direction, it can give a more accurate estimate of how many pages you have created if you only know the word count. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. If you plan on printing digitally, keep in mind that printondemand printing presses will charge you based on your page count.
Estimates vary based on different kindle devices available, but the above settings translate into approximately 250300 words per page on average. This is because these programs only count actual words, but publishers. Youre writing your first novel, and you know you must shoot for around 80 to 95 thousand words. What is a reasonable estimate for the minimum length, in word count, for a nonfiction book. When i started to work on novels i wanted to keep an estimate of how many words and book pages. If you are an author of a book or know of a book s accurate wordcount, contact me. This line count includes blank lines between paragraphs as well as lines with just a single word. If the book offers more complicated instructions such as for creating an origami bird or a fashionable paper doll, the word count can extend as high as 1,500 words. Using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book.
Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. Word count estimates are not guaranteed to be accurate. To emphasize this, look at how many words are in the bible how many words are in the bible. This means that a 75,000 word novel would be around 300 pages. Aug 07, 2010 use the word count feature of the word processing program to track the word count. I have therefore made some averages, based on what ive heard from publishers and agents at childrens book events, and from research and reading. Jan 18, 2010 this is awesome enough for me to get excited over. But rules are made to be broken, and the most successful publishing phenomenon in history did just that. Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. Ultimately, you can expect there to be roughly 300 words per page in a book you write as a whole. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words.
We explain two easy methods to estimate your book s page count. There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book. If you self pub, places such as amazon will print a book as low as 24 pages, so if your poetry is an epic poem it can be almost 1 book itself, say like beowolf. A single novel can be longer, but once the length is above 110,000 words publishers may look at cutting it back, unless it is a particular kind of book books over the 110k word count are usually considered epics. Word count is 500 or less for the lower levels and up to 2000 for higher.
The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000word range. Id guesstimate that nonfiction books generally yes, this is very rough run perhaps 150450 pages, and at about 350 wd page that works out to something like 50150k words. Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. Estimate your page count book designer fiona raven. Oct 18, 2017 therefore, the word count of a novel is crucial if you want your book to be fit for publication.
Coyne uses the nanowrimo wordcount length of 50,000 words for his examples, calling 50,000 words a good foundation to build upon. There are a lot of agents that will reject on atypical word count alone. With that in mind, ive tried to put together the definitive post on word count for fiction novels, young adult, middle grade, childrens books and even memoir. This gives you 200 large print, 500 for an academic book with 350 words per paperback page as a working average. Compiling a list of longest novels yields different results depending on whether pages, words or characters are counted. As you can see, a smaller trim size will produce more pages for the same word count, and a larger trim size will produce less. Weve typeset many books and therefore know how to calculate the number of words that fit on an average book page. The standard is 32 pages and could be one line per page, therefore a total of 350600 words. Books can be as short as 25,000 words, around 100 pages, or as long as 3 million.
What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. There is no average word count per page of a published novel. For the record, any editor worth his or her salt, especially at a major house, is going to understand that word count is whats important to the size of the published book, not the page count of your manuscript. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts. Failing to mention the word count, or committing the faux pas of stating the page count instead, will also see a quick rejection. Jun 27, 2019 similarly, if your book is published and lands in a bookstore, you dont want to turn away prospective readers with a bizarrely small or large book spine. I use microsoft word and a print page is different then a book page. Word count, with a little help from amazon alexis grant.
How long are the chapters in books by famous authors. A manuscript for a novel is typically 500 words per page if singlespaced. Word processing programs have a function that calculates the number automatically, but the results are not reliable in the publishing world. The main takeaway from this is that your word count needs to bear some resemblance to reader expectation. For example, defending jacob has a word count of 122,475 and my utility comes up with 115,320. Since opinions vary greatly, i did some research to verify the numbers in my head. Mar 15, 2009 she very well might be right to ask you to cut the book, but you have to make that decision yourself. As a publisher who has laid out dozens of books for printinga 50,000 word manuscript should end up somewhere between 180 and 220 pages. Nov 22, 2015 in cases like this, you can use a website page word count calculator. Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count. At one extreme you get large print books with 250 words on the page.
First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. Reading length is a participant in the amazon services llc associates program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to and affiliated sites. If a page is 500 words on an ipad, and 250 words on a kindle, it might be only 120 words on a phone. Jun 15, 2017 this is a general list of age categories and word counts for childrens books. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Thats really hard to say, books are usually measured by word count and not page count.
There are numerous genres of nonfiction, including biographies, folklore, creative nonfiction, journals, history, essays, and religious text. Jan 08, 2018 calculate book page count using your word count. These questions made us fill the need of a book page count calculator we put at the bottom of this page. So itll be off on occasion, but it still works well for the average book. Jun 20, 2009 how can i find out the total word count of a book. I dont need one of those equations to help calculate word count based on the number of pages times whatever. But depending on the ereading device and the font size setting, it varies significantly between a phone, a tablet, or a kindle.
How many words per page are there in a typical novel. Of course, when youre writing the first draft of your story, you want to just get your words out on paper. The word count range for each genre can vary quite siginificantly. How many words are there on the average page of a novel. For example, childrens books are going to have fewer words per page than a book meant for adult readers. I would at least think 3 poems filling 24 pages is small, but doable. How to calculate a word count per page pen and the pad. Heres what you need to know about this often overlooked genre. Calculate the number of pages using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book. Page size, margins, breaks and typeface vary greatly.
Do this for several books in your niche to get a targeted range. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. So an 80,000 word manuscript would translate to approximately 350 pages. The more pages in your book, the more the cost of printing will be and the smaller your profit margin. This is an art rather than a science but here are a few tips. Word counts for childrens books i received a request awhile ago to do a post on word counts for different age categories in childrens lit.
Have you ever checked your book s word count, written a few paragraphs, then checked again. That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king. Recently i got asked this question, what is the ideal length word count wise for my first book. Because dialogue requires paragraph breaks, there will be fewer words than if you have a few pages of full paragraphs instead of dialogue. Go to that books page and scroll down to inside this book.
These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and. What will happen in each chapter, and how much has to happen before you move on to the next chapter. Of course, word count wont matter if a story doesnt hook the target audience. That will give you a good guide if you want to emulate it. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to. I created this website to help you better gauge your book s word count, because the. The figure was found through looking at a number of books text stats, until brave new worlds 64,531 word count landed in the exact center of all books50% of books have fewer words and 50% of books have more words. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. When i write i use times new roman 12 font, about 360 words per page with standard margins, less if theres a lot of dialogue. Stephen king word count 112263 274,672 bag of bones 203,3 black house 252,270 blockade billy 15,917 carrie 60,718 cell 121,931 christine 193,602 cujo 121,150 cycle of the werewolf 15,955 desperation 195,011 doctor sleep. In contrast, word count is finite and usually i can calculate book length with about 99% accuracy in part because also included in any calculation is a count of figures, tables, etc. Agents ask for the word count in a query letter for a reason. How many pages would my manuscript be in paperback. What i need to do is have a word count that includes only the text of the story and not the headings and title page text count.
Young adult novel 60,000 words on average, young adult novels usually fall around 55,000 and 70,000 words. A novelist of my acquaintance insists that the only way to estimate the number of words in a book is to multiply the number of pages by 250. Learn the average wordcount for every type of novel, novella, genre, etc. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. I have often looked this up and got different results, which makes it very confusing. If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words at the very least but its better to aim for 90,000. Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book. If theres a business book you admire, why not count the pages, tot up the words on an average page, and see how long it is in total. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words.
The average singlespaced document typed in 12point font contains about 500 words per page, but that can vary pretty drastically depending on. Standard word counts for books publishing with kindle. Its a question often asked by aspiring authors wondering if their manuscript is several thousand words too long or short, but its also an intriguing one for readers to consider. In itself, no measure is perfect but personally i find word count the most useful. Over time, the word count diminished and volume 8 the mark contained only 85,341 words, and the last volume, number 16 kingdom come, dwindled to 77,776 words. Just remember, with so much diversity in nonfiction, you have even less of a reason to get hung up on length. Im currently on a book tour for my new 32 page picture book the type of book that the internet, most agents, and editors typically say should be geared toward 48 yearolds. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. If they dont specify a word count, and many dont, take a look at some of their books in your local library and do a quick word count by counting three lines, dividing by three to get an average, multiplying by the number of lines on the page and then by the number of pages. Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page.
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