I thought the average for a midsized novel would be around 100200 pages. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. The length can vary greatly between genres, though. Aug 05, 2019 the average singlespaced document typed in 12point font contains about 500 words per page, but that can vary pretty drastically depending on your formatting. Oct 18, 2017 from these numbers, we can establish some guidelines. Pick 10 lines on a page that appear to contain the most number of words.
The word count at big five publishers had a slightly narrower range. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Jun, 2011 if you dont know your rate of speech, audible uses 9300 words per hour, or 155 words per minute, in its calculation for books posted on acx. For manuscripts, the answer is about 250300 words per page if it is doublespaced. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. These figures represent continuous words with no blank lines or breaks. 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. In the graph below, which deals with the english wikipedia, the number of articles blue, multiplied by 1,000 and revisions yellow, right hand scale is increasing very much faster than is the. Times new roman, doublespaced, leftside justified only, 1. Books 4 through 6 easily represent the heftiest segment of the series, and then theres a very clear pattern of gradual increase from path of daggers all the way through a memory of light. Some 6090k ya books get classified as hilo, but i dont think they were specifically. The red vertical intercept here represents the series average chapter length, which is around 6,000 words.
Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. Depending on the text formatting, a page word count may include from 200 large print up to 600 words academic book. I was looking online and most of the sources i found said the average number of words per novel page is 250, and the average words per book were 60,000120,000. But if youre writing your one and only novel, keeping the length to 60,000 words for the sake of saving time is pointless. If you dont know your rate of speech, audible uses 9300 words per hour, or 155 words per minute, in its calculation for books posted on acx. What is the average chapter length in a young adult novel. If you analyse the contents of a typical bookshelf in an academic library, you will notice that many of the books are between 272 and 320 pages in length. Multiply the average number of words per line by the number of lines on a full page. The total page count excluding appendices and index is 204 pages, thus about 93,000 words. Your actual rate of speech and finished time may vary significantly from the estimate due to the complexity of the text and your acting choices. I remember reading some westerns in high school and, if i. Oct 27, 2018 james patterson the mostselling author in the world is famous for his tiny chapter of a page and a half around 250500 words.
No more than 90,000 words seems to be the editors mantra these days. Does this mean that every chapter must end up somewhere in this range. Whether or not a book has more or less words per page depends on the layout, the physical size of the pages, the linespacing, the length of paragraphs, and the size of the font. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. Words to pages determine page length from words count. On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. By 2017, however, that number has dropped to 273 pages. A statistical analysis of robert jordans the wheel of time. When the final work is printed for sale and published, the number of words per page will differ. Further measuring of books shows they have about 40 lines per page and around 10 words per line for fulllength lines as in, they go all the way across the page. So, if you have an hour to write and aim to get down 300 words, you might wonder, how many pages is 300 words and the answer is less than one. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Take a typical 250word per page, 15 pages of good content contains around 3,750 words.
Writing middle grade a look at the numbers hannah holt. Larger print, or smaller print, of course, and wider or narrower margins, can make that vary, depending. In other words, a 12 page story tends to be roughly 3000 words, etc. An ebook with 15 pages amounts to only around 3000 words. This number was significantly different from the average we had seen for the estimated print length that had been given in the product details of each books amazon sales page. The average adult novel runs approximately 100,000 words while those in other categories run 80120,000 words. Most adult books are about 90,000 words, and no longer than 100,000 words unless youre jk rowling. Many category editors find it easier to judge the length of a book in the way theyve always done. Every category will have an average length, including childrens books, young adult, business books, etc. One of the more interesting datapoints i found while analyzing this information was the length of the chapters through the wheel of time. The average mean word count was about 53,000 words. Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. Academic books might put 600 words on a page with works of reference. You may also pick the lines from random pages in the document.
May 11, 2009 if you analyse the contents of a typical bookshelf in an academic library, you will notice that many of the books are between 272 and 320 pages in length. This line count includes blank lines between paragraphs as well as lines with just a single word. Once you have a vision for your booksmall, standard, or wide formatyou can move on to the second step in deciding how many words you should write. Pages by paperback uses an industry standard formula for english language publishing of taking the average number of words per page and multiplying it by the average number of characters per word five including a space, for six total, the product of which is then used to divide against the total character count of the project. As pointed out in the axis labels, the horizontal x axis represents chapter length in words, and the y axis represents how many times throughout the books a chapter of that length occurred. The standard minimum is 50,000 words, and the average number for a fulllength novel peaks somewhere at 90,000, with around 250 words per page. The truth is there is no definitive answer to this question. Personally, i recommend at least 10,000 words for nonfiction, unless you can do it justice in less. This number can vary depending on if youre writing dialogue or how short each paragraph is. From these numbers, we can establish some guidelines. Paperback books typically contain how many words per page. Another recommendation by tom corsonknowles from tck publishing. In that situation, keeping your novels to, say, 60,000 words makes sound financial sense because youll be able to write more of them per year. In 2015, the drop resumed as the average fell to 345.
Calculate book page count using word count for book design. It contains 38 lines per page, with an average of 12 words per line, thus 456 words per book page. So that usually includes everything from chapter books, to middle grade, to young adult novels. There were rumors in 20 that amazon had set a minimum word. A manuscript for a novel is typically 500 words per page if singlespaced. Divide the result by 10 to find the average number of words per line.
To fill a page in word, you would need around 500 words, 1. I just popped into my office and pulled a few books off the shelf. How does your book measure compare to whats succeeding in todays marketplace. Sep 11, 2010 i was looking online and most of the sources i found said the average number of words per novel page is 250, and the average words per book were 60,000120,000. How to calculate a word count per page pen and the pad. Just to keep in mind, the average one spaced page usually contains about 3000 characters or 500 words. Some of these essays can be done in one day and others in one night. Mar 20, 2020 howtos or selfhelp usually have 4050,000 words. The typical books wordsperpage count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. The truth is the number of words per page depends on a variety of factors such as the type of font, the font size, spacing elements, margin spacing, and paragraph length to. For paperbacks you get 2550 lines per page, with 35 being a good average. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. The number of words it will take to fill a page will depend on a number of factors including the type of font used, the font size, spacing elements, the margins used on the paper, the paragraph length, etc.
I actually remember this perhaps incorrectly from an episode of the tv series castle. In other words, a 12page story tends to be roughly 3000 words, etc. The average singlespaced document typed in 12point font contains about 500 words per page, but that can vary pretty drastically depending on your formatting. You can use comparable, successful books as models to determine the length. If you need to figure out words per page, you can use a words per page calculator. The golden extent for many publishers is 288 pages about 90100,000 words without tables or figures. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. Count characters and words with the anycount tool for a precise estimate and get every single cent youve earned. To obtain the double spaced length, multiply the values in the last column by 2. When i write technical articles, theyre usually 600 words and about a page and a half. Ultimately, you can expect there to be roughly 300 words per page in a book you write as a whole. This number was significantly different from the average we had seen for the estimated print length that had been given in the product.
Jun 07, 2017 when talking about book length, its common to talk about word count rather than page count. It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in. If you want to calculate any other word count for a 4. So childrens book manuscript chapter length is a big question that ive received many times about all sorts of childrens books that have chapters. I havent had one reader, in thousands of sales, write to tell me that one of my books was too short. Jul 24, 2009 further measuring of books shows they have about 40 lines per page and around 10 words per line for full length lines as in, they go all the way across the page. However, many authors, frustrated with the low price of ebooks, have taken to writing ebooks that are between 40,000 and 50,000. This gives you 200 large print, 500 for an academic book with 350 words per paperback page as a working average. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. If using 12 point times or times roman font, its about 10 english words per line, on average.
The truth is the number of words per page depends on a variety of factors such as the type of font, the font size, spacing elements, margin spacing, and paragraph length to name a few. This page examines a couple of trends loosely associated with quality. But, as youre probably thinking, the goosebumps books are usually pretty thin anyway. Further, that font and size will put 49 singlespaced lines on a. In two minutes, i found ebooks ranging from 10 to 950 pages. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. I use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. How many words per page are there in a typical novel. Using this exercise, you should end up with a good idea of book length expectations for a novel like yours. For the best answers, search on this site an average doublespaced manuscript page has about 250 words on it. Most ebooks i see are double spaced, which makes their pages clearer but also reduces the number of words per page. Because dialogue requires paragraph breaks, there will be fewer words than if you have a few pages of full paragraphs instead of dialogue. James patterson the mostselling author in the world is famous for his tiny chapter of a page and a half around 250500 words.
While a general guideline is one page is 500 words single spaced or 250 words double spaced, this is a ballpark figure. At one extreme you get large print books with 250 words on the page. Most middle grade novels are between 40,000 and 69,000 words long. May 07, 2018 right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot.
Using amazons number of words as a guide, 5,000 words would equal 26. So that comes out to about 400 a page and then factor in the double spacing and you get to 250 or so. In practice you need to subtract 1520% from the page word total once the white space is taken into account. Richard castle, played by actor nate fillion, is decripting a code and mentions that the average number of words per page in his nikki heat books is just bel. 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. Sep 18, 2015 if you need to figure out words per page, you can use a words per page calculator. Books with much shorter sections become bestsellers all the time. One of the questions that a new writer often asks is how long should my book be. I just laid out a 65,000word book and it ended up, with a couple pages of photos and a few pages of appendix, at 268 pages the pages in the main body of the text are numbered up to 237. So 15,000 words would run to 288 pages, and 30,000 words would run to 576 pages. I have 15 books selling in the amazon kindle store of varying lengths. Collecting comp titles will prove useful to you throughout your novels journeyespecially later, when trying to market your book.
I thought the average for a midsized novel would be around. Academic books might put 600 words on a page with works of reference squeezing in words. Well, calculating it out, that would mean the average book was 240480 pages. Jun 05, 2017 so childrens book manuscript chapter length is a big question that ive received many times about all sorts of childrens books that have chapters. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. Traditional publishers and agents advised using the industry formula for determining word count, which is assuming certain standards 12 pt. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages. I think the fewest words i have in a book is about 15,000.
1412 62 78 899 174 894 700 1295 334 1015 862 343 1163 28 1396 916 24 222 1555 485 10 1556 637 276 1085 285 10 401 412 50 613 207 1497 227 928