As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word. Onethird of the novels that come into the agency are rejected because theyre too long or short, perkins says. Paperback books typically contain how many words per page.
While your per page word count may change depending on choices made during your interior layout, this initial calculation is a good. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. You can fit up to 65 characters per line without spaces or punctuation. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. When the final work is printed for sale and published, the number of words per page will differ. Using the formula of number of pages multiplied by 250 words per page, even excluding all the trimmings it puts my word count at 91,250 words using that calculation but the office word counter greatly disagrees and says that the word count without the trimmings is 81,789 words and with the trimmins is still only 82,714. Your best bet is to figure out what books yours is comparable to, then sit down and count the words on 23 typical 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. For the larger, 6 x 9 trim size, would be about 300 words per page. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. Learn how to estimate your page count and how long your book should.
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. How many pages would my manuscript be in paperback. Simply divide the total word count from your word document by the number of words per page. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length.
The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. I remember reading some westerns in high school and, if i. This is useful only as a writers alternate way of assessing the length of a manuscript, nothing more. Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. So if you write a 35,000 word manuscript, your formatted book will likely be around 140 pages. 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. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. If im writing a novel, this gives me 40 chapters and 70,000 words when im done. Even fox cutters estimate is 250 words per page isnt useful. Its too much hassle and timeconsuming time you couldve spent refining and perfecting your book content. A 100 page book would be, then, about 25,000 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.
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. On the layout tab, in the page setup group, click size, and then select more paper sizes. The average picture book is 32 pages long, but the front matter title page, page, etc. Word count assuming your manuscript is in courier 12 with 1inch margins in a manuscript will come out to about 250 words per page. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. At a writers conference i recently attended, publishing veteran jane friedman said 80,000 words is good for most fiction, below 60,000 isnt novel length territory, and above 120,000 is likely too much. Build your book format a paperback manuscript word for. So should i stay with this word count, or try to bring the word count down. Search for word count totals in books word counters. Line count varies depending on page size, font size, etc.
For example, atonement has a word count of 123,378 and my utility comes up with 110,765 words. This 90,000 word guideline for how many words in a novel is just that, a guideline. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. The best way to guesstimate your page count is to assume 250 to 300 words to a page. Estimate your page count book designer linda parke.
Most agree that under 1,000 words would be rather short and that over 5,000 might be rather too long. That would be the length of a novella in mainstream fiction. Enter your book s trim size into the width and height fields. Well, calculating it out, that would mean the average book was 240480 pages. As a general guideline, chapters should be between 3,000 to 5,000 words. Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. While a general guideline is one page is 500 words single spaced or 250 words double spaced, this is a ballpark figure. In itself, no measure is perfect but personally i find word count the most useful. When i started to work on novels i wanted to keep an estimate of how many words and book pages.
It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in general, 250300 words per page. For paperbacks you get 2550 lines per page, with 35 being a good average. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. 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. Do check your comparable titlesrecent debuts onlyto make sure your story falls in that range. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. I agree that it seems like for a debut author, the agent really looks at that word count. 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. Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. What are the average character counts for a paperback. 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. A manuscript for a novel is typically 500 words per page if singlespaced. Book printing costs for printondemand mill city press. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute.
Readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. 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. Break that down into 25 lines per page and 10 words per line. This ends up being around 350 to 400 pages, depending on the typeset and spacing. 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. Of course, word count wont matter if a story doesnt hook the target audience. Amazon estimates a page count in an ebook to be around 187 words. Divide your final word count or the word count youre aiming for by 250 or 300 to arrive at your page count estimate. In 2015, the drop resumed as the average fell to 345.
This line count includes blank lines between paragraphs as well as lines with just a single word. Using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book. In the apply to list, select whole document and click ok. Im not sure if im pushing the word count over, been trying cut back the word count. 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. In 2017, the downward trend has continued, with an average book length of. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. Now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. 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. On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book.
When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. Page count also plays a role in the royalties youll retain since printondemand companies will share part of your compensation. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. How many words per page are there in a typical novel. I thought the average for a midsized novel would be around 100200 pages.
Actually books are generally about 100,000 words for a full novel in mass market paperback. 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. Many, yes, but there are exceptions due to the layout and font size of a particular book. For manuscripts, the answer is about 250300 words per page if it is doublespaced. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. I use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. This resizes your pages and changes your page count, which you need to know for setting your margins. It seems like ya novels are getting longer and longer nowadays, but maybe my attention span is getting shorter. At one extreme you get large print books with 250 words on the page. The typical book s words per page count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot. Mark up your manuscript where you think the page breaks might go, or place the text on 28 separate pages, staple them together like a book, and read the story as you turn the pages.
Realize it over the maximum word count for erotic, science fictionfantasy genre. Sharp objects has a word count of 80,565 and my utility calculates it at 80,7. Ideally, you want to give your reader something she knows. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Another rule of thumb is you can get 250 to 300 words on a typeset page. Calculate book page count using the word count from your word. Thats really hard to say, books are usually measured by word count and not page count.
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