Average word count book

We are also going to look at how harry potter is comparable to other young adult novels in regards to word count. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. 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. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. However, i understand that the length of twilight is unusually long for a debut novel. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. All we have to do is use the wp tool that shows 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. When i started writing three years ago, the mg word count i kept hearing was no more than 30,000 words.

I publish my books first on smashwords and then, after they pass vetting for the smashwords premium catalog, i publish them on amazon as well. So itll be off on occasion, but it should get you relatively close for the average book. Obviously, my point is not that you should submit a first book of anywhere near 200,000 words. Publishers want to know the overall length of your book. They were willing to accept longer books because they knew to follow up books would sell well. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. A higher word count will make a book with a small trim size too bulky and uncomfortable to hold. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages.

Upper middle grade can hit in the 50k word count range possibly longer, if its something really special. This question came in as a reader comment on one of the earlier blog posts. 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. In itself, no measure is perfect but personally i find word count the most useful. Can be publisher specific, ranging from 3,000 to absolute max 5,000. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. Famous book series and novel word counts count words and. 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. May 14, 2018 readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. The sweet spot, according to donald maas, is 100,000 to 115,000 words.

Most agree that under 1,000 words would be rather short and that over 5,000 might be rather too long. Famous book series and novel word counts number of words. But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer, lengths may also vary by subgenre. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book 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. My middle grade novel is complete at 250,000 words, and have five sequels planned which will each be approximately the same length. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words.

In this article, were going to look at how many words are in the harry potter series. Nicholas sparks word count popular novel word count. 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. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels.

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. 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. 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 you are an author of a book or know of a book s accurate wordcount, contact me. How to put together a poetry manuscript for publication. Word count estimates are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Sep 20, 2019 the total word and page count will vary from book to book and is dependent on your writing and overall book formatting average time to write this book. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. With fun, lighthearted, simple middle grade youll want to stay around the 20k30k word count range. In outlining your book in 3 easy steps, editor shawn coyne says, the average novel today is about 90,000 words. I once entered a competition that set a maximum word limit of 80,000 for young adult novels and 100,000 for adult novels. The golden compass by philip pullman 112,815 words, prisoner of azkaban by jk rowling 106,821 words, and enders game by orson scott card 100,609 words. The total page count excluding appendices and index is 204 pages, thus about 93,000 words. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. The first alone has sold more than 120 million copies, and the rest have sold at least 65 million each. Discover the average number of words on a page by counting the number of words on three randomly picked full pages distributed throughout the book. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and.

These are basic learning books that creatively teach colors, numbers or simple, fun stories for bedtime. Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word. An approximate word count round numbers based on what your wp tells you enables them to estimate costs and other factors involved in printing a book. There are plenty of books that purposefully play with the word counts of their chapters. The di vinci code 2003 by dan brown is 8,380 words christian book word count. Young adult fiction allows for a lot of flexibility in word count. Use these numbers as a baseline for your writing goals. Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story. If a page is 500 words on an ipad, and 250 words on a kindle, it might be only 120 words on a phone. The best word count for your selfpublished novel self. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. Martin and harper lee keep things more evenly paced in a game of thrones and to kill a mockingbird, respectively. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page.

The 57 year old reading range straddles a few different categories of books. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. 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. Most blogs and writer websites had the moreorless the same advice forget the length and the average word count of your novel. Jenkins started strongly but weakened, along with the. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook.

The left behind series original books, not including the prequel, 19952007 by tim lahaye and jerry b. That said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally lies between 100,000 and 115,000. This should capture the authors writing style and provide a reliable estimate of the number of words used by the. Word counts for chapter books and middle grade can range from 1,50030,000 or more. By most peoples standards, 40,000 words would be pretty short for a novel. It contains 38 lines per page, with an average of 12 words per line, thus 456 words per book page. This question about average word count was on my mind as well, when i started writing my book. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts.

Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a word count guideline. Smashwords gives a precise word count for each and every b. Jun 27, 2019 that said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally lies between 100,000 and 115,000. At an average reading rate of 125 words per minute, thats about 145 hours of reading.

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. Search for word count totals in books word counters. 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. The grandfather of modern christian fiction, in his steps by charles m. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. Other issues such as margin space and paragraph length will likely result in some variation from the calculations given.

What is a good way to get the word count of a kindle book. But depending on the ereading device and the font size setting, it varies significantly between a phone, a tablet, or a kindle. Oct 18, 2017 the average chapter word count of these novels falls within the 2,0005,000 range. Word counts of famous book series harry potter by jk rowling.

Big, epic stories get anywhere from 120,000 to 200,000 words. Aug 05, 2019 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. 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. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. As you can see, established authors get much more flexibility when it comes to the length of their book. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres.

It seems like ya novels are getting longer and longer nowadays, but maybe my attention span is getting shorter. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Realize it over the maximum word count for erotic, science fictionfantasy genre. Line count varies depending on page size, font size, etc.

If youre writing a young adult fantasy novel, you should keep your word count below 90,000 words or 300 book pages. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 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. 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, he also mentions that the wizard of oz was 40,000 words. Im just saying that some things are more important than word counts. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing.

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. 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. As persuasion progresses, jane austen seems to elongate hers, building them up on a crescendo. Jan 08, 2018 calculate book page count using your word count. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. The page count is 32 or 40 pages with a word count of under 1,500. If youre writing an adult fantasy novel or an epic fantasy novel like game of thrones, your word count can skew higher at 90,000 200,000 words. This reduction will be very small, like maybe 12 lines less per page, and 510 pages less for the book.

Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. I am on the record as saying i dont really care about word counts unless they are so offthe wall out of bounds that it is absurd. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. The stories should be easy to follow and have an average word count of 1,000 to 10,000 words, a range similar to an adult short story. Novels for adult readers fall between 80,000 and 120,000 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. This article how to write a bestselling business book has a good, concise, logical answer on the ideal length today for a business book less than 100 pages. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common.

On average, how long is a childrens book for children. The actual word count for harry potter and the sorcerers stone is 78,792 and my utility calculates 77,876. I found some disagreement about the ideal length of mystery novels. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. The word count to aim for with this type of book is usually between 500 and 600 words. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is the quality of your manuscript. That being said, it should provide a more accurate indication of the number of pages a specific word count will be and the number of words per page you type when compared to the general rule of thumb. The old man and the sea was about 25 to 30,000 words. I agree that it seems like for a debut author, the agent really looks at that word count. When combined, the total harry potter word count is over a million words.

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. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. Average the count by taking the total number of words counted and divide by three.

The sorcerers stone 77,325 words the chamber of secrets 84,799 words the prisoner of azkaban 106,821 words. I know that this is considered long but i really cant cut anything, it is all integral to the story. Some are as short as 50,000 words the perfect book for a beach vacation. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. As with everything else when it comes to writing a book, these are only guidelinesnot rules. Im not sure if im pushing the word count over, been trying cut back the word count. For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you 41,212. Harry potter and the sorcerers stone is about 77,500 words total. 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. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words.

For example, atonement has a word count of 123,378 and my utility comes up with 110,765 words. Word count for book series the first book in each series below was the authors first. The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000 word range. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. 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. Novelty books include popups, puzzles, pulltabs and other interactive features. The eight harry potter books have an impressive combined word count of over 1 million words. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. Between the ages of four and eight, children have picture books read to them and also begin to read themselves. This is due to the audience youre reaching preferring that length. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to be. Many of these books are written in rhyme or in a simple singsong meter that is catchy and fun.

The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916. In the first book i tried to write my chapters were about 500 words long. So should i stay with this word count, or try to bring the word count down. Its too much hassle and timeconsuming time you couldve spent refining and perfecting your book content.

First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. If the word count of twilight is disregarded, the average. 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. 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. The word count figures for the other six books, in order.