Average book length word count

The average chapter word count of these novels falls within the 2,0005,000 range. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. 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. If you are an author of a book or know of a books accurate wordcount, contact me. May 14, 2018 readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. A statistical analysis of robert jordans the wheel of time. A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words.

Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. Can be publisher specific, ranging from 3,000 to absolute max 5,000. 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. Im curious about your advice compose the novel in the standard format from the start rather than changing it later why does this matter. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. In this article, were going to look at how many words are in the harry potter series. Eye of the world was one of the more normally distributed book in terms of chapter wordcount, which essentially means it had a mostcommon chapter length and a comparable number of chapters that were longer or shorter the dragon reborn was rightskewed, which means there was a heavy distribution of. The sweet spot, according to donald maas, is 100,000 to 115,000 words. It should be enough to communicate your message effectively. That said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally lies between 100,000 and 115,000.

As you can see, established authors get much more flexibility when it comes to the length of their book. May 07, 2018 right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. The average length of the novels we publish varies, but is almost never fewer than 80,000 words. Most agree that under 1,000 words would be rather short and that over 5,000 might be rather too long. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. If the word count of twilight is disregarded, the average becomes around 88,625. Its too much hassle and timeconsuming time you couldve spent refining and perfecting your book content. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. This is a lot of information at a glance, so ill distill a few salient observations. Apr 11, 2015 nicholas sparks word count the notebook 38,520 message in a bottle 92,760 a walk to remember 49,311 the rescue 100,916 a bend in the road 93,766. Word count estimates are not guaranteed to be accurate. Anything over 110,000 words is considered too long for a fiction novel. I just popped into my office and pulled a few books off the shelf.

Calculate book page count using word count for book design. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. 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. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. However, i understand that the length of twilight is unusually long for a debut novel. What is a reasonable estimate for the minimum length, in word count, for a nonfiction book. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. If im writing a novel, this gives me 40 chapters and 70,000 words when im done. When i started writing three years ago, the mg word count i kept hearing was no more than 30,000 words. While anything over 40,000 words can fall into the novel category, 50,000 is considered the minimum novel length. Let me tell you about how i had to remove my membership from a childrens writer forum because i responded to a newbie about this topic. Within the publishing industry we tend to talk about the length of a book in words rather. Length of a book is typically associated with its sizespecifically page countleading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length.

Onethird of the novels that come into the agency are rejected because theyre too long or short, perkins says. Onethird of the novels that come into the agency are rejected because theyre too long or. Mar 20, 2020 the average adult novel runs approximately 100,000 words while those in other categories run 80120,000 words. 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. Every category will have an average length, including childrens books, young adult, business books, etc. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. Famous book series and novel word counts count words and. Surely when writing the important thing is to get words on the page even if theyre in pink comic sans. That said, this figure differs from book to book and organization to. 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. If youre writing your first novel, the general rule of thumb for novel writing is a word count in the 80,000 to 100,000 range.

Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. When combined, the total harry potter word count is over a million words. The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000word range. While many agents say they wont reject a book solely based on length, many also say they take word count into consideration. That left me with 66 logos word lists, each giving me every originallanguage word in a given book of the bible. For young adult fiction, the word count is once again lower, with the ideal.

Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Oct 27, 2018 i use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. Word counts of famous book series harry potter by jk rowling. The sorcerers stone 77,325 words the chamber of secrets 84,799 words the prisoner of azkaban 106,821 words. Literary agent danielle zigner takes a look at typical novel lengths and what. But rules are made to be broken, and the most successful publishing phenomenon in history did just that. 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. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king. May 11, 2009 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.

If youre a new author, id recommend staying on the shorter side, perhaps around the 75,000 word mark. A books word count does matter and if you get it wrong, this can impact. Jun 27, 2019 put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. 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. Estimate your page count book designer linda parke. Jan 08, 2018 calculate book page count using your word count. Heres an article which breaks down by genre the typical length. The important thing is that your length fits your book. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. As persuasion progresses, jane austen seems to elongate hers, building them up on a crescendo. If your story justifies the length, you neednt worry if you get up to 150,000 words. Science fiction and fantasy novels typically have a word count between 90,000 to 125,000 words. Novelist jane smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel.

Harry potter and the sorcerers stone has 17 chapters with titles, and about 4560 words per chapter. Oftentimes, professional editing will cut down the unnecessary information so your memoir is the appropriate word count. I found some disagreement about the ideal length of mystery novels. We are also going to look at how harry potter is comparable to other young adult novels in regards to word count. For example, atonement has a word count of 123,378 and my utility comes up with 110,765 words. 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. Readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers.

Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. The first book in each series below was the authors first. Everything you need to know about word count and book length for books and novels and memoirs and childrens novels and picture books. Ive heard and read several reasons for this, including. Martin and harper lee keep things more evenly paced in a game of thrones and to kill a mockingbird, respectively. Learn the average wordcount for every type of novel, novella, genre, etc. I was quickly flooded with emails from many an angry author for daring to put a word count on a level of book. Search for word count totals in books word counters. Nicholas sparks word count popular novel word count. 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 eight harry potter books have an impressive combined word count of over 1 million words. Sharp objects has a word count of 80,565 and my utility calculates it at 80,7. As far as length, popular memoirs range quite a bit from about 60,000 words to 120,000 or more. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. Nicholas sparks word count the notebook 38,520 message in a bottle 92,760 a walk to remember 49,311 the rescue 100,916 a bend in the road 93,766.

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. Word count is a direct way to measure the length of a novel in a manner unaffected by variations of format and page size. I use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. To save the time and effort of counting wordbyword, often a rule of thumb for the average number of words per line was used, such as 10 words per. Id guesstimate that nonfiction books generally yes, this is very rough run perhaps 150450 pages, and at about 350 wdpage that works out to something like 50150k words. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. Aug 05, 2019 before diving into the specifics of genrebased word counts, lets look at the broader picture of average book length. I built one logos word list like this for every single book of the bible. The average adult novel runs approximately 100,000 words while those in other categories run 80120,000 words. The length can vary greatly between genres, though. Perkins agency in new york says its much easier to market a firsttime novelists book if the word count falls between 80,000 and 100,000 words, or roughly 300 doublespaced, typed pagesthe average novel length.

Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. A short story has a word count of under 20,000 words though anything over 10,000 puts it. Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the great gatsby, and slaughterhousefive are between 4050,000 words. As a general guideline, chapters should be between 3,000 to 5,000 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. Using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book. Oct 18, 2017 the average chapter word count of these novels falls within the 2,0005,000 range. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. Put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. Apr 11, 2015 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. Many, yes, but there are exceptions due to the layout and font size of a particular book. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. You can use comparable, successful books as models to determine the length you book should be. Ideally, you want to give your reader something she knows. Before diving into the specifics of genrebased word counts, lets look at the broader picture of average book length.

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. At an average reading rate of 125 words per minute, thats about 145 hours of reading. A short story has a word count of under 20,000 words though anything over 10,000 puts it into that no mans land along with novellas where its a long slog for a short story but too short for anything resembling a novel. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages. Count up the total number of words on 10 random full lines from different places and divide by 10 to get the average wordsperline count the number of lines on each page to get the linesperpage check that the book actually starts on page 1 sometimes the stuff before it starts is counted then. Why does the length of a typical novel fall in the 80100,000 range.