For instance, audible uses an average rate of speed of 155 words a minute, or 9300 words per finished hour. The word count at big five publishers had a slightly narrower range. Nobodys stopping you, of course especially if you think your 100,000word novel justifies the word count. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. How many words are there on the average page of a novel. In 2015, the drop resumed as the average fell to 345. Academic books might put 600 words on a page with works of reference squeezing in words. Your best bet is to figure out what books yours is comparable to, then sit down and count the words on 23 typical pages. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count.
Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words. Most publishers have manuscript guidelines you can refer to for the correct formatting. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. When the final work is printed for sale and published, the number of words per page will differ. You can figure out the finished runtime based on the word count. Aug 09, 2017 some freelance editors charge by the word. Generally, there are 300 words per typed doublespaced page, using a 12 point font. For a firsttime novelist, it might be a little hard to pitch your ya manuscript to editors if your word count exceeds that number. The number of characters, the number of subplots, the pacing are all affected by word count. For childrens fiction, the general rule is the younger the audience the shorter the book, and for ya novels the average is 50,00070,000 words.
There are times when it helps to know how many words per page youre writing. Search for word count totals in books word counters. The di vinci code 2003 by dan brown is 8,380 words christian book word count. For paperbacks you get 2550 lines per page, with 35 being a good average. Oct 18, 2017 the average chapter word count of these novels falls within the 2,0005,000 range. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. My own past research on ya word count turned up 5080,000 as an average guideline. This standard was set in earlier times, when most manuscripts were prepared on typewriters with fixed pitch monospace fonts. How to calculate a word count per page pen and the pad. Publishers estimate by pages, including the white space. Rowlings recordbreaking series began with two titles on the high end of that spectrum and finished with five that left the guidelines in the dust. If im writing a novel, this gives me 40 chapters and 70,000 words when im done. 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. A computer count of 50,000 words may be 65,000 in publishers terms.
If the word count of twilight is disregarded, the average becomes around 88,625. The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000 word range. The way you decide the number of words, is to count how many in a solid block of writing of say 10 lines. Oct 27, 2018 i use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. Usually a full novel is considered between 60,000 to 90,000 words. Jun, 2011 as basic info, you need to know the word count, not the page count, of the book you would narrate. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. May 14, 2018 readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. As a general guideline, chapters should be between 3,000 to 5,000 words. The one main advantage this genre has over every other is that. Some will tell you 2,500 words is the average, while others will say that 3,000 to 5,000 word chapters are more likely to be the norm. Count the number of lines on each page to get the lines per page. How many words or pages in the average short story book. Most agree that under 1,000 words would be rather short and that over 5,000 might be rather too long.
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. 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. On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. For manuscripts, the answer is about 250300 words per page if it is doublespaced. Amazon estimates a page count in an ebook to be around 187 words. We are also going to look at how harry potter is comparable to other young adult novels in regards to word count. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. This line count includes blank lines between paragraphs as well as lines with just a single word. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot.
I once entered a competition that set a maximum word limit of 80,000 for young adult novels and 100,000 for adult novels. Paperback books typically contain how many words per page. The grandfather of modern christian fiction, in his steps by charles m. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. Divide the result by 10 to find the average number of words per line. Set the trim size and type specs to whatever you wish see instructions below, and see how many pages the text runs to. Personally, i recommend at least 10,000 words for nonfiction, unless you can do it justice in less. In this article, were going to look at how many words are in the harry potter series. As persuasion progresses, jane austen seems to elongate hers, building them up on a crescendo. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. Books can be as short as 25,000 words, around 100 pages, or as long as 3 million words, or about 1,000 pages. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. Calculate book page count using word count for book design.
Aug 05, 2019 if youre thinking bigger and wondering, for example, how many pages is 50,000 words, simply divide your target word count 50,000 by 500 since thats the average words per page. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. The average singlespaced document typed in 12point font contains about 500 words per page, but that can vary pretty drastically depending on your formatting. While a general guideline is one page is 500 words single spaced or 250 words double spaced, this is a ballpark figure. Check that the book actually starts on page 1 sometimes the stuff before it starts is counted. Count the number of lines on each page to get the linesperpage.
When i sign a contract for a book, the publisher specifies the word count they expect for. Picture story books for older children between the ages of 6 and 10 include more text with each picture. How many word document pages are there in a 350 page book. It seems like ya novels are getting longer and longer nowadays, but maybe my attention span is getting shorter.
The standard is 32 pages and could be one line per page, therefore a total of 350600 words. Then use the following formula to calculate the average number of words per page. The actual word count for the hunger games is 99,750 and my utility calculates 94,743 words. Because dialogue requires paragraph breaks, there will be fewer words than if you have a few pages of full paragraphs instead of dialogue. Ideally, you want to give your reader something she knows. The daily word counts of 39 famous authors writers write. Thus, divide your word count by 300 and you again get an approximate number of pages. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. I use microsoft word and a print page is different then a book page. During the introductory month of the new system, the conversion of kenpc into the actual number of words in the book actual word count showed significant differences from one book to the other. The standard manuscript format is one inch margins all around on an 8. Twilight has 24 titled chapters, or 26 if you count the preface and epilogue, and about 4580 words per chapter. On average, young adult novels usually fall around 55,000 and 70,000 words.
Take a typical 250 word per page, 15 pages of good content contains around 3,750 words. Ultimately, you can expect there to be roughly 300 words per page in a book you write as a whole. Of course, word count wont matter if a story doesnt hook the target audience. Average word count in a book book editing services. Jul 24, 2009 a 95,000 word book even by page count is a different story than a 70,000 word book. Most middle grade novels are between 40,000 and 69,000 words long.
Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. The left behind series original books, not including the prequel, 19952007 by tim lahaye and jerry b. The eight harry potter books have an impressive combined word count of over 1 million words. In outlining your book in 3 easy steps, editor shawn coyne says, the average novel today is about 90,000 words. Another general guideline is to assume that your book will average 300 words per page. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. You should be writing in size 12 font on standard sized paper, not trying to emulate the look of a published book. The average singlespaced document typed in 12point font contains about 500 words per page, but that can vary pretty drastically depending on. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. I use amazons data feeds to come up with the calculation. Most adult books are about 90,000 words, and no longer than 100,000 words unless. That said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average.
In order to have an average, there would have to be standards, which there are not. Jun 30, 2008 publishers dont work on pages they work on word count. But, he also mentions that the wizard of oz was 40,000 words. Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. At one extreme you get large print books with 250 words on the page. It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in general, 250300 words per page. If a page is 500 words on an ipad, and 250 words on a kindle, it might be only 120 words on a phone. Simply divide the total word count from your word document by the number of words per page. 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. We need to count words if we are writing for a publication that asks us to stay within a set number of words.
Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. Many, yes, but there are exceptions due to the layout and font size of a particular book. So, if you have an hour to write and aim to get down 300 words, you might wonder, how many pages is 300 words and the answer is less than one. How many words per page are there in a typical novel.
Divide your word count by 390 to arrive at the approximate number of pages ex. When i started to work on novels i wanted to keep an estimate of how many words and book pages. 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. Some 6090k ya books get classified as hilo, but i dont think they were specifically. Further, that font and size will put 49 singlespaced lines on a page. 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. Big, epic stories get anywhere from 120,000 to 200,000 words. If you use a computer word count note it on the front of the ms. Martin and harper lee keep things more evenly paced in a game of thrones and to kill a mockingbird, respectively. When i started writing three years ago, the mg word count i kept hearing was no more than 30,000 words. Before our book page count calculator, you had to dig around through multiple sources to figure out how many words per page for your exact font size and then do the math. Average word count per page creative writing forums.
Pages by paperback uses an industry standard formula for english language publishing of taking the average number of words per page and multiplying it by the average number of characters per word five including a space, for six total, the product of which is then used to divide against the total character count of the project. Learn the average wordcount for every type of novel, novella, genre, etc. Its too much hassle and timeconsuming time you couldve spent refining and perfecting your book content. Word count to book pages resources for independent authors. This number can vary depending on if youre writing dialogue or how short each. For example, atonement has a word count of 123,378 and my utility comes up with 110,765 words. Estimate your page count book designer linda parke. Each genre and subgenre has its own word count range. For example, childrens books are going to have fewer words per page than a book meant for adult readers. Most adult books are about 90,000 words, and no longer than 100,000 words unless youre jk rowling. If you want to know the total word count for your document, then multiply this number by the number of pages it contains. In 2017, the downward trend has continued, with an average book length of 273 pages. The typical books wordsperpage count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. Pauls article shows you a formula to calculate finished time.
If you want to know the total word count for your document, then multiply this number by the number of pages. May 07, 2018 this 90,000word guideline for how many words in a novel is just that, a guideline. Can be publisher specific, ranging from 3,000 to absolute max 5,000. These books can have as many as 3000 words and may have pages. This number was significantly different from the average we had seen for the estimated print length that had been given in the product details of each book s amazon sales page. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. If using 12 point times or times roman font, its about 10 english words per line, on average. Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book. Page size, margins, breaks and typeface vary greatly. Using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors.
But depending on the ereading device and the font size setting, it varies significantly between a phone, a tablet, or a kindle. Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. I counted the number of words on page 7 of night whispers, then multiplied by the number of pages, then rounded, and so theres aout 4 words per book. This 90,000 word guideline for how many words in a novel is just that, a guideline. On average, one doublespaced page has 250300 words. Many of these books are written in rhyme or in a simple singsong meter that is catchy and fun. Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. Jan 08, 2018 now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. Sharp objects has a word count of 80,565 and my utility calculates it at 80,7.
You can use word to count how many words you have written in a document. Do check your comparable titles recent debuts onlyto make sure your story falls in that range. This gives you 200 large print, 500 for an academic book with 350 words per paperback page as a working average. My upperlevel ya novel is 211 pages, 61,078 words, tnr 12 pt. As basic info, you need to know the word count, not the page count, of the book you would narrate. Another recommendation by tom corsonknowles from tck publishing. The average chapter word count of these novels falls within the 2,0005,000 range. For debut books in this field the average word count tends to be 35k and it has therefore become the marker many industry professionals look for in queries from new writers. Since there is no universal word count for a page in a book, publishers usually ask the author before publication for the overall word count of the book. Heres how pavita singh of pavedita in palo alto, california, breaks down costs for editing services based on word count and type of editing. The old man and the sea was about 25 to 30,000 words. These are basic learning books that creatively teach colors, numbers or simple, fun stories for bedtime. A manuscript for a novel is typically 500 words per page if singlespaced.
I believe the word count has increased as she wrote more books. Writing middle grade a look at the numbers hannah holt. There is no average word count per page of a published novel. My latest 300 page novel gives an approximate word. This article on writers digest also suggests a length of around 100115,000, and takes a good look at desirable word count ranges for different genres. As you can see, a smaller trim size will produce more pages for the same word count, and a larger trim. I keep hearing that houses are looking for books around 200 pages long. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. 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. Jenkins started strongly but weakened, along with the. The average mean word count was about 53,000 words.