Word count of a book

But depending on the ereading device and the font size setting, it varies significantly between a phone, a tablet, or a kindle. 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. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. Of course, rules are made to be broken, especially in literature. Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the great gatsby, and slaughterhousefive are between 4050,000 words. In 2016s list, ron chernows 816page alexander hamilton managed to crack the top spot.

Search for word count totals in books word counters. Therefore, the word count of a novel is crucial if you want your book to be fit for publication. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. That was the formula in the good old days when courier. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a word count guideline. At a writers conference i recently attended, publishing. 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.

There are a few book word count guidelines for each genre, but these arent hard and fast rules. You would be wise to come close to these suggested. The actual word count for harry potter and the sorcerers stone is 78,792 and my utility calculates 77,876. 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. This is a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, womens. I remember reading some westerns in high school and, if i. There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book. Coyne uses the nanowrimo word count length of 50,000 words for his examples, calling 50,000 words a good foundation to build upon. Word count tool is a word counter that provides an extensive statistics about the word count, character count, the number of characters without spaces. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising.

Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. That said, this figure differs from book to book and organization to. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. 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. For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you. Amazon estimates a page count in an ebook to be around 187 words. Novelty books include popups, puzzles, pulltabs and other interactive features. Its too much hassle and timeconsuming time you couldve spent refining and perfecting your book content. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. If you are an author of a book or know of a book s accurate wordcount, contact me. I think it stands as the longest fantasy trilogy to date. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and. Word count is a direct way to measure the length of a novel in a manner unaffected by variations of format and page size.

It should be enough to communicate your message effectively. For childrens fiction, the general rule is the younger the audience the shorter the. 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. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. Compressing a very exciting scene so you can meet your chapter word count target is also not going to do you any favors. Put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. In 2017, the downward trend has continued, with an average book length of 273 pages. 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. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. 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. Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word. The daily word counts of 39 famous authors writers write.

Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. For nonfiction books, word count guidelines are more flexible, sometimes even double the word counts listed here. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. 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. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. 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. The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916.

Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. 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. It will also help you understand what your target audience i. 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. Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. But chapter word count is something that you want to keep in. 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. The book genre you choose will have a substantial impact on your author brand. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length.

Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. While its important that every story find its natural length, it takes time to develop an instinct as. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to. This tool also reports the number of syllables, monosyllabic words, polysyllabic words, sentences, paragraphs, unique words, short words, long 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. But the word count of a chapter matters if you want your story to flow right. 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. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Of course, when youre writing the first draft of your story, you want to just get your words out on paper. Search for a book, tell us how fast you read, and start reading. 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. 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.

A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words. This isnt to say that long books are no longer succeeding. Some 6090k ya books get classified as hilo, but i dont think they were specifically. Find out how long it will take you to read any book by using our book word count search. According to reedsy, the general word count by genre are. These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and. But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer, lengths may also vary by subgenre. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. If there is an average, 60,000 words to 80,000 words are probably the sweet spot. Some genres like science fiction can be much longer and spend 1,000s of words on worldbuilding. However, the drop in the overall average length of bestsellers over the last 7 years points to a marked. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job.

If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words. Between 80,000 and 89,999 words is a good range you should be aiming for. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. Word count estimates are not guaranteed to be accurate. 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. Generally, there are 300 words per typed doublespaced page, using a 12 point font. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing.

Fleshing out an imagined historical world lends itself to a higher word count, so historical fiction tends to be closer to 100,000 words. As a general rule of thumb, a novel falls somewhere between word count ranges of 50,000 words and 100,000 words. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. There is no definitive word count guide for nonfiction books due to the many subgenres. 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.

The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. 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 word count to aim for with this type of book is usually between 500 and 600 words. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 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. 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 average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. Do you want to publish a wide format book with inspiring quotes down the side margins. If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words at the very least but its better to aim for 90,000.