Word count of average book

Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages.

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. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. For example, if an author has to write a minimum or maximum amount of words for an article, essay, report, story, book, paper, you name it. Once you have a vision for your book small, standard, or wide formatyou can move on to the second step in deciding how many words you should write.

Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. While theres no reliable statistic, heres an interesting post on word count from the blog of former agent colleen lindsay. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. Word count estimates are not guaranteed to be accurate. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction.

Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in general, 250300 words per page. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Like everything in writing, you may write a work of genius that smashes all the rules.

When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12yearolds and could maybe be considered tween, using the term upper middle grade is. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers. This is a general list of age categories and word counts for childrens books. Novelist jane smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel. Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. 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. 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. Once you know what your book will be about, its time to start planning the structure of the story. As mentioned, general fiction for adults should come in at 100,000 words. Writing middle grade a look at the numbers hannah holt. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Calculate book page count using word count for book design.

Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count. Standard word counts for books publishing with kindle. What is the average number of actual words in comic books. There are a few book word count guidelines for each genre, but these arent hard and fast rules. I have therefore made some averages, based on what ive heard from publishers and agents at childrens book events, and from research and reading. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. What is a reasonable estimate for the minimum length, in word count, for a nonfiction book. It was 333 words which tends to be lower then the average picture book. If you are an author of a book or know of a book s accurate wordcount, contact me. 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.

As with everything else when it comes to writing a book, these are only guidelinesnot rules. With fun, lighthearted, simple middle grade youll want to stay around the 20k30k word count range. Word count guidelines do, however, differ between genres and age groups. On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. For childrens fiction, the general rule is the younger the audience the shorter the. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. Academic books might put 600 words on a page with works of reference squeezing in words. The word count to aim for with this type of book is usually between 500 and 600 words. It seems like ya novels are getting longer and longer nowadays, but maybe my attention span is getting shorter. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. 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 nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. This line count includes blank lines between paragraphs as well as lines with just a single word. Youre writing your first novel, and you know you must shoot for around 80 to 95 thousand words. The daily word counts of 39 famous authors writers write. 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. Young adult fiction allows for a lot of flexibility in word count. Estimate your page count book designer fiona raven. How many chapters will you need before you reach your target word count. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. 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.

Generally, there are 300 words per typed doublespaced page, using a 12 point font. However sometimes, like today, the reverse happens. Since 2011, the average length of a bestseller has dropped steadily from year to year. The total page count excluding appendices and index is 204 pages, thus about 93,000 words. 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 di vinci code 2003 by dan brown is 8,380 words christian book word count. The first answer, because its novella length, not novel length were talking adult fiction, not chapter books and novellas are hard to sell. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length.

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. Most middle grade novels are not pitched as a series. Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story. 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. Regarding the value of adhering to standard word counts, jackie bates, a former managing editor at aa publishing, adds. Some are as short as 50,000 words the perfect book for a beach vacation. I agree that it seems like for a debut author, the agent really looks at that word count. Most middle grade novels are between 40,000 and 69,000 words long. This number can vary depending on if youre writing dialogue or how short each. 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. Search for word count totals in books word counters. Now, they dont offer word count or running time for books, but they do have a search api.

Calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. This is a lot harder because its not a specific field im receiving back i have to scrape the results and do some crazy parsing of the data. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words. If youre new to selfpublishing on amazon and wondering, just how much should i write for my kindle book. The greater the word count the larger the book more sections and. The grandfather of modern christian fiction, in his steps by charles m. At one extreme you get large print books with 250 words on the page.

Use these numbers as a baseline for your writing goals. 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. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. The post lists a dizzying number of genres and a recommended word count. In some cases, these books will have no words at all, such as for the very small child who likes to feel the fluffy cotton tail of a bunny or push the squeaker for a duck quack. Novelty books include popups, puzzles, pulltabs and other interactive features.

A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. The word count at big five publishers had a slightly narrower range. It contains 38 lines per page, with an average of 12 words per line, thus 456 words per book page. The left behind series original books, not including the prequel, 19952007 by tim lahaye and jerry b. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english.

Recently i got asked this question, what is the ideal length word count wise for my first book. 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. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. One of my biggest problems as a publisher is having authors deliver more than was agreed to. Oftentimes, professional editing will cut down the unnecessary information so your memoir is the appropriate word count. But for print publishing, the physical cost of producing the book is an issue, and the market does generally know what it likes. There are plenty of books that purposefully play with the word counts of their chapters. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts. Upper middle grade can hit in the 50k word count range possibly longer, if its something really special. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. What will happen in each chapter, and how much has to happen before you move on to the next chapter. You would be wise to come close to these suggested manuscript lengths. Using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book.

Fleshing out an imagined historical world lends itself to a higher word count, so historical fiction tends to be closer to 100,000 words. 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. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to. If you have 6 panels, stick to a maximum of 35 words per panel. The typical book s words perpage count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. We explain two easy methods to estimate your book s page count. Wordcounter will help to make sure its word count reaches a specific requirement or stays within a certain limit. Everything you need to know about word count and book length for books and. For nonfiction books, word count guidelines are more flexible, sometimes even double the word counts listed here.