In north america, the standard used by editorial staff in figuring word count is 250 words per page, 10 words per line using a 12 pt. Another general guideline is to assume that your book. Of course, word count wont matter if a story doesnt hook the target audience. 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. One thing to keep in mind with how many pages is words is that it depends on the text, its size, and the spacing youre using. Readers looking for a good beachread in the mystery section will not likely gravitate towards a 1,000 page book. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. This per page charge makes your book s page count instrumental in the cost per book, which is why its the first item youll fill out in the printing calculator. 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.
Jun 27, 2019 word count signals to people what kind of book theyre dealing with. 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. In the apply to list, select whole document and click ok. How to calculate book length in an earlier post i discussed broad issues relating to word count and book length but didnt actually explain how the length of a book is calculated. There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. For example, childrens books are going to have fewer words per page than a book meant for adult readers. Divide your word count by 475 to arrive at the approximate number of pages. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. Hearthkeeper by cordelia kingsbridge, love, sex, and understanding the universe by harrie farrow, rubble an. Your best bet is to go to a good childrens bookstore and look at books like your own in terms of target audience.
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. Author eve tells me her book came in at 95,000 words. That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king. We only print spine text on books with more than 100 pages. Now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic. 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. If so, these books need to be the 7 x 9 trim size, and the slightly larger pages can hold 400 to 450 words per page. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a word count guideline. Word count limits can seem like they stifle artistic flow, but they exist for a reason. Heres our word count guide for 18 different book genres.
For paperbacks you get 2550 lines per page, with 35 being a good average. Compiling a list of longest novels yields different results depending on whether pages, words or characters are counted. Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 words. What is the ideal wordcount per chapter for a novel. Its too much hassle and timeconsuming time you couldve spent refining and perfecting your book content. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. So, a 55,000word manuscript is about 220 typeset pages, and a. This website converts the number of words to the number of pages, online and for free. Word count to book pages resources for independent authors. These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and. Build your book format a paperback manuscript word for. Of course, rules are made to be broken, especially in literature.
Enter your book s trim size into the width and height fields. Learn how to estimate your page count and how long your book should be. 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. In practice you need to subtract 1520% from the page word total once the white space is taken into account.
This tool is useful when writing essays at university to determine how many pages you are required to write. For manuscripts, the answer is about 250300 words per page if it is doublespaced. It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in general, 250300 words per page. Thus, 100 pages 40,000 to 45,000 words and 200 pages yields 80,000 to 90,000 words for the main body of the text this excludes the. I remember reading some westerns in high school and, if i. Multiply up by the number of pages and get to a rough word count. Thus, 100 pages 40,000 to 45,000 words and 200 pages yields 80,000 to 90,000 words for the main body of the text this excludes the words used in the quotations down the sides of the book s margins. Heres a simple way to calculate your books approximate page count using the word count of your manuscript. Estimate your page count fiona raven book designer. But while page count is integral to your per book cost, its not something youll. How many words per page are there in a typical novel. Aug 05, 2019 if youre thinking bigger and wondering, for example, how many pages is 50,000 words, simply divide your target word count 50,000 by 500 since thats the average words per page.
These questions made us fill the need of a book page count calculator we put at the bottom of this page. 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. This tool is useful when writing essays at university to determine how many pages. Well, if you use standard modern manuscript formatting, about 2530,000 words total are in 100 manuscript pages. The typical books words per page count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. It makes quite a difference whether you want to publish a childrens picture book, a 50recipe smoothie book, a science fiction novel or a technical encyclopedia. I use amazons data feeds to come up with the calculation.
The word count 788,280 is based on the kjv and seems to be almost exactly as wed expect see our page on how many words in the bible for more information on this. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read. As you can see, a smaller trim size will produce more pages for the same word count, and a larger trim size will produce less. This involves the manuscript being double spaced, with 12 pt tnr, arial, verdana or other easy to read font all throughout the manuscr. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. Text on larger spines must be sized to fit the spine, with at least 0. Wordcounter will help to make sure its word count reaches a specific requirement or stays within a certain limit. Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. I just laid out a 65,000 word book and it ended up, with a couple pages of photos and a few pages of appendix. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction.
Childrens fiction is so varied in terms of length, type, illustration. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. Since opinions vary greatly, i did some research to verify the numbers in my head. While a general guideline is one page is 500 words single spaced or 250 words double spaced, this is a ballpark figure. If it is instructionalself help, etc with lots of subheadings, sections and bullets, id say 250 page for a 9x6 if it has lots of picturesdiagrams, it would be less of course. Im leaving this in the list to show that word count isnt offered for every book. This translates into just 20,000 to 25,000 words for a 100 page book.
Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. Do you wonder how many pages a given number of words is. If youre given a per page rate, you can calculate a per word rate by assuming the industry standard of 250 words per page, e. The amount of words in a hundred page book is also going to depend on the size of the typeface, not to. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. Word count estimates are not guaranteed to be accurate. The book fold layout sets you up for printing your masterpiece automatically in the correct order, ready for folding and binding. Page count depends on a number of factors, including font size and type, margins, spacing, paragraph structure and more.
Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. Lets take a quick tour of copy fitting, casting off and related issues here. If a page is 500 words on an ipad, and 250 words on a kindle, it might be only 120 words on a phone. That was the formula in the good old days when courier. I use microsoft word and a print page is different then a book page. Whether you want to create a booklet for an event or print out an ambitious book project, consider using the prebuilt page settings for booklets that comes with word. Estimate your page count book designer fiona raven. That means your manuscript must be at least 3540,000 words long.
Do you want to publish a wide format book with inspiring quotes down the side margins. Use these numbers as a baseline for your writing goals. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Word count, with a little help from amazon alexis grant. The number of pages changes depending on the number of words, the font and the font size. In general, illustrated stories are more about page count than word count. This resizes your pages and changes your page count, which you need to know for setting your margins. If you are an author of a book or know of a books accurate wordcount, contact me. 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. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. This means your book will be between 100 and 230 pages in total. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. But a good general estimate for a novel size book 5x8. 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 books 50% of books have fewer words and 50% of books have more words.
On the layout tab, in the page setup group, click size, and then select more paper sizes. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. Sep 20, 2009 how to calculate book length in an earlier post i discussed broad issues relating to word count and book length but didnt actually explain how the length of a book is calculated. We explain two easy methods to estimate your book s page count. Popular novels word count 100k 105k books goodreads. Word counts for childrens books i received a request awhile ago to do a post on word counts for different age categories in childrens lit. The actual word count for the hunger games is 99,750 and my utility calculates 94,743 words. These pages counts are based on the american standard sized paper using the standard manuscript expectations see above. May 14, 2018 what follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. The 5 x 8 trim size means about 250 words per page. Enter your books trim size into the width and height fields.
These books are generally heftier in general, so for a 150 page book you can target 45,000 words and 60,000 words for a 200 page book. But depending on the ereading device and the font size setting, it varies significantly between a phone, a tablet, or a kindle. You can also copy and paste text from another program over into the online editor above. A 100 page book would be, then, about 25,000 words. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. Jan 08, 2018 youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. When i started to work on novels i wanted to keep an estimate of how many words and book pages. 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 line count includes blank lines between paragraphs as well as lines with just a single word. If you are an author of a book or know of a book s accurate wordcount, contact me. Most adult books are about 90,000 words, and no longer than 100,000 words unless youre jk rowling. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words.
Calculate the number of pages using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book. Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. At one extreme you get large print books with 250 words on the page. These figures represent continuous words with no blank lines or breaks. The book fold layout sets you up for printing your masterpiece automatically. How many words in each book of the bible the holy word. The graph shows the average length of the top 100 bestsellers in each of the 30 main amazon kindle categories, measured in terms of the number of. Academic books might put 600 words on a page with works of reference squeezing in words.
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. To check word count, simply place your cursor into the text box above and start typing. So, do a word count with a word processor, then divide by 250 to get the number of standard pages. Youll see the number of characters and words increase or decrease as you type, delete, and edit them. 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. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages. Books can be as short as 25,000 words, around 100 pages, or as long as 3 million words, or about 1,000 pages. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. Calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. You may read faster or slower depending on your reading speed, but in general adults typically read at about 300 words per minute wpm when reading for pleasure.
Calculate book page count using word count for book design. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. Words per page is a free online words to pages calculator which converts the numbers of words you write. Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book. Amazon estimates a page count in an ebook to be around 187 words. The graph shows the average length of the top 100 bestsellers in each of the 30 main amazon kindle categories, measured in terms of the number of pages. Pod book printing costs are usually determined by a percover charge plus a per page charge. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. Search for word count totals in books word counters. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. On the spreadsheet, the editors total cost will be automatically calculated once you insert your total word count and the editors per word rate. Divide your word count by 390 to arrive at the approximate number of pages ex. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words.
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