Word count of a book

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. Students, teachers, parents, and librarians can search in english or spanish using criteria such as atos book level or a lexile measure, interest level, title, author, fictionnonfiction, subject, awardwinners, state lists, ccss. While its important that every story find its natural length, it takes time to develop an instinct as. There are a few book word count guidelines for each genre, but these arent hard and fast rules. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words.

Therefore, the word count of a novel is crucial if you want your book to be fit for publication. There is no definitive word count guide for nonfiction books due to the many subgenres. The book genre you choose will have a substantial impact on your author brand. But depending on the ereading device and the font size setting, it varies significantly between a phone, a tablet, or a kindle. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the great gatsby, and slaughterhousefive are between 4050,000 words. The daily word counts of 39 famous authors writers write. You would be wise to come close to these suggested. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Generally, there are 300 words per typed doublespaced page, using a 12 point font. Novelty books include popups, puzzles, pulltabs and other interactive features.

The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and. 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. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors.

This is a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, womens. Search for a book, tell us how fast you read, and start reading. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. It should be enough to communicate your message effectively. Compressing a very exciting scene so you can meet your chapter word count target is also not going to do you any favors. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. That was the formula in the good old days when courier. But chapter word count is something that you want to keep in. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. In 2017, the downward trend has continued, with an average book length of 273 pages.

For childrens fiction, the general rule is the younger the audience the shorter the. Some 6090k ya books get classified as hilo, but i dont think they were specifically. The actual word count for harry potter and the sorcerers stone is 78,792 and my utility calculates 77,876. Search for word count totals in books word counters. Your chapter length has to work well with the overall word count of the book short chapters create an even distribution of both content and action. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. We have compiled a list of the daily word counts of famous authors and what they had to say about writing every day what is a word count. Word count tool is a word counter that provides an extensive statistics about the word count, character count, the number of characters without spaces.

Length of a book is typically associated with its sizespecifically page count leading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. Between 80,000 and 89,999 words is a good range you should be aiming for.

Never pad your manuscript just to meet a word count guideline. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. If a page is 500 words on an ipad, and 250 words on a kindle, it might be only 120 words on a phone. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. These word counts are my personal references they are not official, and do not include back matter, which is bonus material for the reader or information geared for parents, teachers, or older readers. 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. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Amazon estimates a page count in an ebook to be around 187 words. Of course, when youre writing the first draft of your story, you want to just get your words out on paper. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. 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.

Put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. I remember reading some westerns in high school and, if i. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to. 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. Word count is a direct way to measure the length of a novel in a manner unaffected by variations of format and page size. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. Do you want to publish a wide format book with inspiring quotes down the side margins. The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916. If you are an author of a book or know of a book s accurate wordcount, contact me. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. However, the drop in the overall average length of bestsellers over the last 7 years points to a marked.

This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel.

Word count estimates are not guaranteed to be accurate. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words. According to reedsy, the general word count by genre are. 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. Of course, rules are made to be broken, especially in literature.

This isnt to say that long books are no longer succeeding. For you dear authors, the only time you should take note about the word count is probably when you are hiring someone for editing and formatting because the more word count you have, the more the service is going to cost you. In 2016s list, ron chernows 816page alexander hamilton managed to crack the top spot. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words.

This tool also reports the number of syllables, monosyllabic words, polysyllabic words, sentences, paragraphs, unique words, short words, long words. The word count to aim for with this type of book is usually between 500 and 600 words. That said, this figure differs from book to book and organization to. If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words. At a writers conference i recently attended, publishing. But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer, lengths may also vary by subgenre. 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. These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word. Coyne uses the nanowrimo word count length of 50,000 words for his examples, calling 50,000 words a good foundation to build upon. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is the quality of your manuscript.

While the idea of chapters in the 3,000 to 5,000 word range is a good guideline when roughing out your book s structure, it isnt a rule, and the story itself should be the primary deciding factor. Find out how long it will take you to read any book by using our book word count search. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. Fleshing out an imagined historical world lends itself to a higher word count, so historical fiction tends to be closer to 100,000 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. As a general rule of thumb, a novel falls somewhere between word count ranges of 50,000 words and 100,000 words. For nonfiction books, word count guidelines are more flexible, sometimes even double the word counts listed here. I think it stands as the longest fantasy trilogy to date. 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. When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12yearolds and could maybe be considered tween, using the term upper middle grade is advisable.

For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read. 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. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. If there is an average, 60,000 words to 80,000 words are probably the sweet spot. But the word count of a chapter matters if you want your story to flow right. Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words at the very least but its better to aim for 90,000. Some genres like science fiction can be much longer and spend 1,000s of words on worldbuilding. It will also help you understand what your target audience i. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. I could end the book on a cliffhanger, but there are really only two good places to do that, and one is only 60,000 words in, which would really be more of a novella than a novel, and the other would be over 150,000 words in, which means the ending would be a novella. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job.