It also displays average length of words used in text in number of characters and average length of sentences in number of words. 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. Enter the average number of words per line, and then hit submit below. Estimate your page count fiona raven book designer. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Armed with these word counts, i now have a range of lengths that have been proven popular. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres.
The longer the book, the higher the estimate will be. 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. With a track record to back them up, established writers have greater flexibility. Only 2 of the 7 harry potter books came in at under 100,000 words sorcerers stones and chamber of secrets which happened to be the first two books in the series.
Martins a song of ice and fire series, is the lengthiest of the five currently released books, with a word count of almost 415. Under 500 words can be described as flash fiction between and 8000 words is a short story also, most short story competitions will stipulate their required word length for entry between 5000 and 10,000 words is a long short story. A 90,000 word count signals to professionals that you know what you are doing. Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. Please enterpaste your text to estimate the reading time. Enter the word count into the tool below or paste in text to see how many minutes it will take you to read. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers around 50,00070,000 words. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. For paperbacks you get 2550 lines per page, with 35 being a good average. What is a good way to get the word count of a kindle book. This seems a reasonable limit even for the established authors, as its about the length of the average novel. As we were developing the content, the client started talking to their volunteer base about it.
The length can vary greatly between genres, though. Well, this is one of those lines that they just did so thats one inch, but lets just see how many of those we need to go the whole length of the car. A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. A manuscript for a novel is typically 500 words per page if singlespaced. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. 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. Personally, i recommend at least 10,000 words for nonfiction, unless you can do it justice in less. Classification word count novel over 40,000 words novella 17,500 to 40,000 words novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words short story under 7,500 words. This averages to about 22 to 23 chapters per novel, with the average chapter length around 4,280 words. The trim size of your book dictates approximately how many words fit on. No matter how much you adjust the other variables, if the ms is only 50,000 words in length instead of 95,000, then you have a problem if the book was announced as being 288 pages in length but the most it can be stretched to is 160 pages. How estimated reading times increase engagement with content. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook.
Its too much hassle and timeconsuming time you couldve spent refining and perfecting your book content. Number of words should be visible in amazon for books details. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. This also covers whether the length of your book classifies as a short story, novella. How to write a bestselling business book bloomberg. Lewis the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, roald dahls charlie and the chocolate factory. 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. That said, if your book is around 40,000 words, youre in good company. When the final work is printed for sale and published, the number of words per page will differ. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. Word count estimates are not guaranteed to be accurate. Notice that the average number of words known by a 22yearold 17,200, as estimated by goulden et al.
That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king. Now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic. It is feasible to count the number of words in a published chapter. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book.
A rough estimate of the word count in the latter two categories is ten million words. I suspect they correlated complaints i paid 99 cents for a book of x words. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. When you query a publisher, its customary to include your novels estimated word count. For a compilation of short stories, i would shoot for at. This is a story that is between 10,000 and 40,000 words. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. Find out how long it will take you to read any book by using our book word count search. 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. Readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. They got significant feedback concerning the length of the course. If so, the number and size of your images will affect your page count. This tool is useful when preparing a speech or a presentation.
Voice over script calculator, words to time script. Estimates number of minutes based on a slow, average, or fast paced reading speed. The best way to estimate the length of your paper is to estimate the number of words. Regardless, publishers keep cranking out as many as 11,000 new business books each year, according to the coauthors of the 100 best business books of.
Smashwords gives a precise word count for each and every b. To save the time and effort of counting wordbyword, often a rule of thumb for the average number of words per line was used, such as 10 words per. Please use the chart below only as a guide rates vary greatly, due to context, vocal delivery, audience, etc. The number of minutes you will take is dependent on the number of words and your speed of speech, or reading speed. Novelist jane smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel. Bestselling author caleb carr may write novels of 250,000 words, but when you pitch your novel and offer up that number, be prepared for a glacial reception. How many words per page are there in a typical novel. The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do. Youre better off going with the answers given by shawn and marion i guess. This should capture the authors writing style and provide a reliable estimate of the number of words used by the. This website helps you convert the number of words into the time it takes to deliver your speech, online and for free.
This is an art rather than a science but here are a few tips. It is an estimated value of time in which your text can be read. Also, the chapters are evenly divided into 3 titled parts. Estimate your page count book designer linda parke. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. We were working on a volunteer training project, and we had a target length in mind. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. Search for a book, tell us how fast you read, and start reading. Today, even after the introduction of what amazon calls version 2. The science fiction and fantasy writers of america specifies word lengths for each category of its nebula award categories. Word count and book length by maeve maddox 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. The book with the least total number of words is sorcerers stones, while the book with the most words is order of the phoenix. For fiction, i recommend 5,000 words or more for short stories.
I think you need to have an awful lot of compelling material, masterfully told, in order to write a memoir of that length or longer. The hunger games has 27 untitled chapters, and about 3700 words per chapter. Assuming you use the standard conventions for manuscript format 1 margins, 25 doublespaced lines per page, and a 12 point nonproportional font like courier, then a good rule of thumb is one page equals 250 words for the mathimpaired, that means you multiply the number of. However sometimes, like today, the reverse happens. Knowing how many words in a novel is the first step toward writing a book. For a novel, i would recommend at least 50,000 words in length. 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. We can estimate the cost of your audiobook by multiplying a per finished hour narrator rate with the estimated length of your finished recording. Wordcounter will help to make sure its word count reaches a specific requirement or stays within a certain limit. Jeannette wallss the glass castle, which must be more than. 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. 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.
Voiceover lets get some practice estimating lengths. If we include such words into analysis, the mean length will increase up to 9 or 10 letters. We explain two easy methods to estimate your books page count. To get an idea of what your book will look like you need to match the number of words per page on your word processing page to the finished printed page. This video explains why word count is important and the word count ranges for various kinds of books. Average the count by taking the total number of words counted and divide by three. Simply divide the total word count from your word document by the number of words per page. 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. One of my biggest problems as a publisher is having authors deliver more than was agreed to. However, many authors, frustrated with the low price of ebooks, have taken to writing ebooks that are between 40,000 and 50,000. A single novel can be longer, but once the length is above 110,000 words.
However, you can plug in some sample numbers using the length of your script and average speaking speed between 110150 words per minute in north american english, if you would like to gain an appreciation for how long it will take a voice talent to read the script. You wont get exact, but youre wondering whether 35k is reasonable, so you dont need exact. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Regarding what you say about estimating scene length, i have a couple of questions. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Our tool is designed to show the estimated number of pages for a typical text written with most commonly used words. For manuscripts, the answer is about 250300 words per page if it is doublespaced. Tips from raven book design for writers estimating word counts.
Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. If you are an author of a book or know of a books accurate wordcount, contact me. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages. It also shows the number of paragraphs in a text file. How many words are there in the harry potter book series. Convert words into minutes here, some decimals into seconds there, a little rounding at the end and you can calculate estimated time to read manually.
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. This is a list of the novels over 500,000 words published through a mainstream publisher. Of course youre correct about 2,500 words not being carved in stone anywhere, but amazon might have a good reason for choosing that number. Why does the actual result differ from the number of pages shown by your website. 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. I believe they know what theyre talking about and i clearly didnt. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and. Different kinds of books should be a different length. By most peoples standards, 40,000 words would be pretty short for a novel. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers. Estimating elearning course length elearning uncovered. Calculation is based on the average reading speed that around 200 words per minute.