Calculate book page count using word count for book design. Know your content, know your mainline pitch and some possible permutations, create a highlevel outline, write a compelling chapter and sell that. The numbers below are taken from her post, how long is your book. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Even if you dont have a word count yet, prompts are an excellent way to exercise the writing muscle. In outlining your book in 3 easy steps, editor shawn coyne says, the average novel today is about 90,000 words.
The 1 thing you need to do to write a new york times. Harry potter and the deathly hallows 198,000 words. Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. How many pages would my manuscript be in paperback. For example, atonement has a word count of 123,378 and my utility comes up with 110,765 words.
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. Harry potter and the halfblood prince 168,000 words. Most published books average closer to 300 words per page than 200. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a wordcount guideline. But typically, there is around 300 words per page in the body section of a book. Novelty books include popups, puzzles, pulltabs and other interactive features. It is a short piece of inspiration, not instruction. The old man and the sea was about 25 to 30,000 words.
How to write and publish early readers and chapter books. I agree that it seems like for a debut author, the agent really looks at that word count. It was too difficult to count words in the days before word processors with an. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you 41,212. All word counts are the work of computer programmer dave whitinger. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. Im going to give you some information here, but first i want you to know why this is important. You would be wise to come close to these suggested. It seems like ya novels are getting longer and longer nowadays, but maybe my attention span is getting shorter.
That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king. Wordcounter will help to make sure its word count reaches a specific requirement or stays within a certain limit. If you want to learn how to write a book, sign up for our online course. 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. I know fiction works on average come in at 60,000 but i really had no idea about. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. If your book falls within the standard preferred wordcount range, its one less. I have checked and doubledchecked his counts with a manual count in 10 of the 66 books and they all match perfectly. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot. Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and.
Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read. 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. 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. The greater the word count the larger the book more sections and. On average the total word count clocks in at 200250 words. There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book.
There are a few book word count guidelines for each genre, but these arent hard and fast rules. As you write more and more your word count will probably go up for each chapter because you become a stronger writer and are able to go more in depth in each chapter. Many, yes, but there are exceptions due to the layout and font size of a particular book. The daily word counts of 39 famous authors writers write. When i considered this question for my book, i recalled a post by literary agent rachelle gardner outlining suggested word count totals for various types of books. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. If you want to write a memoir, for example, look at four or five similar memoirs and determine their wordcount. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. The writing market has changed a lot since i first got published. But, most nonfiction publishers want to be sold the concept, and therefore be able to discuss the direction of the project, before you write the book. Word counts of popular ya books as i started drafting my new wip a ya scifi thriller i began wondering what word count i should aim for. So if you write a 35,000 word manuscript, your formatted book will likely be around 140 pages. There are many different different paths to getting published.
And as you can see, it varies, depending on the story. A christian book of about 33,000 words will likely produce how. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. Obviously, my point is not that you should submit a first book of anywhere near 200,000 words. 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.
Twilight has 24 titled chapters, or 26 if you count the preface and epilogue, and about 4580 words per chapter. The word describes a specific kind of book or magazine you may use during your daily quiet time. Most blogs and writer websites had the moreorless the same advice forget the length and the average word count of your novel. If the word count of twilight is disregarded, the average becomes around 88,625.
So if youre a writer looking to boost sales of your new book or if youre trying to place it on the highly coveted new york times best sellers list make sure you track your word count closely. In some cases, these books will have no words at all. If youre writing a feature or news article for a print publication, you might wonder what it means when an editor tells you that they need 10 column inches or 25 inches. Still unsure of how long to make your nonfiction book. What is the average number of actual words in comic books.
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. How to do word count for newspaper articles pen and the pad. Ive put together word counts for every book of the bible. However if youre curious to see what the average word count is for standard genres, check out the breakdown in the article. A fullservice literary agency that focuses on books for the christian market. Generally a 50,000word novel would be the minimum word count. By most peoples standards, 40,000 words would be pretty short for a novel.
If you have 6 panels, stick to a maximum of 35 words per panel. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. The actual word count for harry potter and the sorcerers stone is 78,792 and my utility calculates 77,876. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. In the first book i tried to write my chapters were about 500 words long. 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. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12yearolds and could maybe be considered tween, using the term upper middle grade is advisable. Im writing ya fantasy and i keep reading that word counts for fantasy should be high because of.
Big, epic stories get anywhere from 120,000 to 200,000 words. The grandfather of modern christian fiction, in his steps by charles m. This is a question that many beginning writers have. What is a reasonable estimate for the minimum length, in word count, for a nonfiction book. And of course, if youre in need of book editing, youll wonder how much it will cost. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. Writing towards a word count might not work for everybody, but having a rough goal in mind certainly helps me when im sketching out chapters and undertaking my first draft. Are you wondering what the word count for your book should be. You might say, but with ebooks the word count doesnt matter. New christian writers often ask how many words their book should contain. We explain two easy methods to estimate your books page count. The first alone has sold more than 120 million copies, and the rest have sold at least 65 million each. 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. For my travel memoir, should i query when i have a proposal and several sample chapters, like nonfiction, or wait until the manuscript is complete, like fiction.
A publisher with a production department that knows what theyre doing can estimate book length from a manuscript formatted in courier 12point, 1 margins, 25 lines per page. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. Information on writing and publishing in the early reader and chapter book market. Martin and harper lee keep things more evenly paced in a game of thrones and to kill a mockingbird, respectively. Once youve finished a draft of your book, the natural next step is to look for a book editor. The word count to aim for with this type of book is usually between 500 and 600 words. The following statistics apply to the 1769 edition of the 1611 king james bible.
This question came in as a reader comment on one of the earlier blog posts. Would you consider a post on memoir guidelines, since memoir falls somewhere between fiction and nonfiction in many ways. American christian fiction writers classify a novella as between. The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916. 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. Harry potter and the sorcerers stone has 17 chapters with titles, and about 4560 words per chapter. Only if youre a major celebrity can you blow right through that word count and just keep going. These numbers are pulled from the original languages using logos bible softwareyou can see how i did it below.
This tool is helpful for all authors everywhere who want to figure out how many pages their final book will contain based on their current word count. The di vinci code 2003 by dan brown is 8,380 words. Standard word counts for books publishing with kindle. But, he also mentions that the wizard of oz was 40,000 words. The question of how long your manuscript should be is sometimes hard to answer because different publishers have different guidelines. Frequently asked questions on getting published how can i get the book ive written published. Go out and find similar books to the one you want to write and figure out how many words are in the book. Putting it through our production planning spreadsheet, for the three page sizes we use the most often, and using a generic design with an 11point font, i get. Most memoirs need to be in the 70,000 to 100,000word range. Over time, the word count diminished and volume 8 the mark. Calculate book page count using the word count from your word document.
The best thing that you can do is look over comparable books and try to judge word count by their size, average wordspage, and illustration content. The christian writers institute newsletter list or 99 cents if you want to read it. How to use our book page count calculator select your word print size select the book genre enter your books word count. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts. Since 2011, the average length of a bestseller has dropped steadily from year to year. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. How to write early readers, easy chapter books, and. 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. A devotional is a unique form of christian writing. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. As persuasion progresses, jane austen seems to elongate hers, building them up on a crescendo.