Count up the total number of words on 10 random full lines from different places and divide by 10 to get the average wordsperline. Everything you need to know about word count and book length for books and. What is the average number of actual words in comic books. These numbers are pulled from the original languages using logos bible softwareyou can see how i did it below. However, book length varies widely between genres, among authors, and based on the content of the book. Chapter books will come in at the lower end of the spectrum, while middlegrade books meant for older readers may even slightly exceed 55,000 words. For childrens fiction, the general rule is the younger the audience the shorter the. The actual word count for harry potter and the sorcerers stone is 78,792 and my utility calculates 77,876. Try not to completely tether yourself to word counts. For more information on word counts for childrens book, check out this post. But rules are made to be broken, and the most successful publishing phenomenon in history did just that. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read.
The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000word range. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. If you have 6 panels, stick to a maximum of 35 words per panel. What will happen in each chapter, and how much has to happen before you move on to the next chapter. It was 333 words which tends to be lower then the average picture book. As with everything else when it comes to writing a book, these are only guidelinesnot rules. By the way, if you want to know what i think of logos.
In outlining your book in 3 easy steps, editor shawn coyne says, the average novel today is about 90,000 words. Books that can be read by many ages are called crossover books. Publishers know this and often wont even look at a book submission that is too long. For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you 41,212. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to. Are you wondering what the word count for your book should be. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. The old fashioned way of estimating word count in physical books was to take 5 or 10 if you want random pages and actually count the words on each page. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page 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. Short novels in general hit around 40,000 to 60,000 words, but most publishers wont touch a novel below 60,000. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. If youve read our related article on how many words are in a novel youll recall that the typical word count for a novel according to is 80,000 to 109,000 words.
For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. Whether youre just curious about how many words are in these books or youre writing a book and want to compare the length of your novel to these famous tomes, then read on to find the word counts of famous books and series. Search for word count totals in books word counters. For novels specifically in the young adult genre, the typical range is between 55,000 79,999 words. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. I used the lexham hebrew bible and the nestlealand novum testamentum graece for these word counts. The average word count in a book is 60k to 100k words. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. There are plenty of books that purposefully play with the word counts of their chapters. Most blogs and writer websites had the moreorless the same advice forget the length and the average word count of your novel. Ive put together word counts for every book of the bible. However if youre curious to see what the average word count is for standard genres, check out the breakdown in the article. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words.
Too many words are a warning sign that the author does not know how to write for the age group and that the book has not been edited seriously enough. Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. This question about average word count was on my mind as well, when i started writing my book. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. Over time, the word count diminished and volume 8 the mark contained only 85,341 words, and the last volume, number 16 kingdom come, dwindled to 77,776 words. This number can vary depending on if youre writing dialogue or how short each. It contains 38 lines per page, with an average of 12 words per line, thus 456 words per book page. Once you know what your book will be about, its time to start planning the structure of the story. We recommend memoirs be between 45,000 to 80,000 words in order to maintain intrigue and reduce intimidation. The stories should be easy to follow and have an average word count of 1,000 to 10,000 words, a range similar to an adult short story. Longer word counts allowed for fantasy, scifi, paranormal, historical. Count the number of lines on each page to get the linesperpage.
However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers. Standard word counts for books publishing with kindle. Recently i got asked this question, what is the ideal length word count wise for my first book. 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. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. This question came in as a reader comment on one of the earlier blog posts. Less than 70,000 unless fantasy scifi supernatural, which can be longer, max 90,000. Novelist jane smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel. And, in case youre wondering, here are the average word counts for other popular genres. Since 2011, the average length of a bestseller has dropped steadily from year to year. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. Of course, rules are made to be broken, especially in literature. That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king.
In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. One of my biggest problems as a publisher is having authors deliver more than was agreed to. Books can be as short as 25,000 words, around 100 pages, or as long as 3 million words, or about 1,000 pages. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book. For childrens fiction, the general rule is the younger the audience the shorter the book, and for ya novels the average is 50,00070,000 words. Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story. How many chapters will you need before you reach your target word count. Between the ages of four and eight, children have picture books read to them and also begin to read themselves. The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916. However sometimes, like today, the reverse happens. Every book is different and for any suggested word or page count you see, you are likely to encounter several popular fantasy books that are outside. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page.
Average word count in a book book editing services. Famous book series and novel word counts number of words. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. The popular book the noticer 2009 by andy andrews barely breaks the novel barrier at 40,454 words without the readers guide that was added to pad the book. Nicholas sparks word count popular novel word count. Word counts for chapter books and middle grade can range from 1,50030,000 or more. Word count for picture books the standard is text for 32 pages. 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. Ya manuscripts can have a word count anywhere from 55k to 90k. This article suggests that essentially, it should be as long as it needs to be, meaning dont look at the word count, just get the story out then edit. 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. The average word count for a typical novel ranges anywhere from 70,000 to 120,000 words, with the average hanging. What is a good way to get the word count of a kindle book. Youre writing your first novel, and you know you must shoot for around 80 to 95 thousand words.
On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. The total page count excluding appendices and index is 204 pages, thus about 93,000 words. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. If youre new to selfpublishing on amazon and wondering, just how much should i write for my kindle book.
Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count. Nicholas sparks word count the notebook 38,520 message in a bottle 92,760 a walk to remember 49,311 the rescue 100,916 a bend in the road 93,766 popular novel word count the worlds largest word count encyclopedia. Word count is very important to writing books for young children. Its a question often asked by aspiring authors wondering if their manuscript is several thousand words too long or short, but its also an intriguing one for readers to consider. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. 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.
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