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. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. The most accurate results are shown for academic essays with four paragraphs per page and no headings or subheadings. That will tell you how many pages you have written.
On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. There are times when it helps to know how many words per page youre writing. Im presently working on a novel and want to make certain my word count falls in line with what other authors produce. For example, a typical 5th grade book has 200 to 250 words per page. For the larger, 6 x 9 trim size, would be about 300 words per page. Just to keep in mind, the average one spaced page usually contains about 3000 characters or 500 words. How many chapters will you need before you reach your target word count. You can find the volumes online, but many are out of print. Simply divide the total word count from your word document by the number of words per page. Now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic. When i write technical articles, theyre usually 600 words and about a page and a half. This is useful only as a writers alternate way of assessing the length of a manuscript, nothing more.
This rate assumes standardquality text and about 250 words per page. Count characters and words with the anycount tool for a precise estimate and get every single cent youve earned. I remember reading some westerns in high school and, if i. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. Then if you divide that number by the number of chapters you have written, it will give you an average number of pages in each chapter. 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.
Because dialogue requires paragraph breaks, there will be fewer words than if you have a few pages of full paragraphs instead of dialogue. This reduction will be very small, like maybe 12 lines less per page, and 510 pages less for the book. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. Count the number of pages in the book and enter that number. Words to pages book size each publisher usually has a formula for determining the number of words per manuscript page and how that translates into words per printed page for that particular publishers templates, but a given formula wont necessarily be accurate in relation to books published by a different publisher. Rich olsonchildrens book illustrator this is a good breakdown of the childrens book categories. You might find your story strengthening as the excess words drop off. Estimate a small reduction for the linesperpage and the numberofpages values. Words, words, words describes the research that changed the way she and many other teachers teach vocabulary. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. 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. It offers educators practical, researchbased solutions for helping students fall into new language, learn new words, and begin to use. Or, if your book is slimmer than youd hoped, you can choose a smaller page size, a larger font size, and a paragraph style which adds more generous spacing and more pages to your book.
The typical books wordsperpage count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. You can see that this is a little less than 400 words per page in paperback. This type of information is very helpful to your book designer. While a general guideline is one page is 500 words single spaced or 250 words double spaced, this is a ballpark figure.
How many words per page are there in a typical novel. The page doublespaced on the right fills less than half the page. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. How many pages do they read appalachian state university. This book has 144 pages, so it contains about 28,800 words. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Convert words to pages with our free word counter tool. As basic info, you need to know the word count, not the page count, of the book you would narrate. For manuscripts, the answer is about 250300 words per page if it is doublespaced.
Surely when writing the important thing is to get words on the page even if theyre in pink comic sans. To get the number of pages read, the total words read needs to be divided by the average number of words on a page for the book being read. You must provide an accurate word count per page or by document when you are submitting a literary project. Using amazons number of words as a guide, 5,000 words would equal. 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. Most adult books are about 90,000 words, and no longer than 100,000 words unless youre jk rowling. A manuscript for a novel is typically 500 words per page if singlespaced. Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. 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. The overview below provides an indication of the number of pages required based on font.
The chapters are short and simple with only an illustration or two per chapter. As a childs first books, these come in all shapes and sizes, but usually have very few words per page. 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. The hobbit has more unique words and a higher unique word density than both the silmarillion and each volume in the lord of the rings. Estimate your page count book designer fiona raven. This book in multiple volumes is 3,277,227 words and is 7,312 pages, according to mental floss.
On average there are 233 words per page for a nonfiction book and 280 words per page for a fiction book on amazon. Depending on the text formatting, a page word count may include from 200 large print up to 600 words academic book. 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 is useful for all writers to make sure they are hitting their appropriate market. Just enter a number of words or paste your text, choose the formatting you need, and get the estimated number of pages. Since just comparing the number of unique words in a book does not take its length into account i decided to calculate the percentage of unique words of the whole text. This is another common question, and for most writers it should be easy to answer by using a word count feature in your writing tool. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. On average, one doublespaced page has 250300 words. If you havent designed your interior or will have gorham printing design it for you, the best way to estimate a rough page count is from a word count.
So that comes out to about 400 a page and then factor in the double spacing and you get to 250 or so. Ultimately, you can expect there to be roughly 300 words per page in a book you write as a whole. Randomly choose a page from your book that is a good sample of the rest of the book. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot. At one extreme you get large print books with 250 words on the page. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. Use this converter to calculate how many pages a certain number of words is.
Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. These books are generally heftier in general, so for a 150page book you can target 45,000 words and 60,000 words for a 200page book. You can figure out the finished runtime based on the word count. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. Heres how pavita singh of pavedita in palo alto, california, breaks down costs for editing services based on word count and type of editing copy editing or line editing per 100 words. For instance, audible uses an average rate of speed of 155 words a minute, or 9300 words per finished hour. How many pages would my manuscript be in paperback. Word count assuming your manuscript is in courier 12 with 1inch margins in a manuscript will come out to about 250 words per page.
Most ebooks i see are double spaced, which makes their pages clearer but also reduces the number of words per page. What will happen in each chapter, and how much has to happen before you move on to the next chapter. When the final work is printed for sale and published, the number of words per page will differ. A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. I am writing a novel right now, and im up to 4025 words in 10. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers around 50,00070,000 words. Academic books might put 600 words on a page with works of reference squeezing in words. What is the generally accepted number of words per page for a published novel.
Theyll pad out a short manuscript with large type and more leading, but lengthy manuscripts will correspondingly be compressed. 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. The actual process of why they reject a book may not be as obvious to them but in most cases extra words mean the book is. Pauls article shows you a formula to calculate finished time. One important thing to remember is that these rates apply to doublespaced copy. This is because these programs only count actual words, but publishers. These books are for readers between the ages of 6 and 10 and can have as many as 3,500 words.
For paperbacks you get 2550 lines per page, with 35 being a good average. This is an art rather than a science but here are a few tips. Wordprocessing programs have a function that calculates the number automatically, but the results are not reliable in the publishing world. So if you are working on a novel, take the number of words you have written and divide it by 250. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words.
Calculate book page count using word count for book design. It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in general, 250300 words per page. To fill a page in word, you would need around 500 words, 1. This line count includes blank lines between paragraphs as well as lines with just a single word. Unless you are an artist or have a brilliant idea that hasnt been produced before, this market is hard. Hello, i was just wondering how many words the average novel has on a page. Know what readers expect in terms of your genres word count even if the reader isnt aware of their expectations when it comes to how long a book is. How to calculate a word count per page pen and the pad.
Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. But dont forget that publishers employ different font sizes and leading depending on how long a book is in words. Using a standard font size, you can estimate about 250300 words per page. Moving to even a slightly larger page size can lower your page count and save printing costs. Once you know what your book will be about, its time to start planning the structure of the story. A good example is the wonderful little personalspiritual guide, the four agreements, by don miguel ruiz, which averages about 10 words per line x 20 lines per page 200 words per page. Its too much hassle and timeconsuming time you couldve spent refining and perfecting your book content. Youre writing your first novel, and you know you must shoot for around 80 to 95 thousand words. Im curious about your advice compose the novel in the standard format from the start rather than changing it later why does this matter.
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