Nstandard book length word count

By the way, if you want to know what i think of logos. May 11, 2009 word count and book length getting published was indeed a good blog post. 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. In some cases, these books will have no words at all, such as for the very small child who likes to feel the fluffy cotton tail of a bunny or push the squeaker for a duck quack. Are you wondering what the word count for your book should be. Word count, with a little help from amazon alexis grant. The short answer to the question about the length of a story is to say every story should be as long as it needs to be. Rowling started with two books of relatively conventional length. 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. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. And man, people love to point out exceptionsand they always will. I suspect youre a student of life too, so perhaps you should choose the same. A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words.

I clicked on the unabridged version, and it lists the word count as 97,364. Your chapter length has to work well with the overall word count of the book short chapters create an even distribution of both content and action. Of course, when youre writing the first draft of your story, you want to just get your words out on paper. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Shareranks is about ranking things that are top, most, greatest, or even worst in all categories. A novella is a work of narrative prose fiction, longer than a short story but shorter than a novel.

Jun 28, 2010 word counts ill get straight into it, starting with books for grown ups. In fact, the majority of printed books are turned into ebooks. Use arrows to rank one item in the longest novels ever by word count vs another. For novels specifically in the young adult genre, the typical range is between 55,000 79,999 words. Childrens fiction is so varied in terms of length, type, illustration. Book length word count science fiction and fantasy world. Everything you need to know about novel word counts nathan. I have even seen books with chapters that were all the same length that had both problems. As you can see, established authors get much more flexibility when it comes to the length of their book. Feel free to contact me directly for any feedback, corrections, r. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages.

Regarding the value of adhering to standard word counts, jackie bates, a former managing editor at aa publishing, adds. In many respects the word count is the wrong question. 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. And as youve probably guessed it is sitting pretty right in between middle grade and adult. Search for word count totals in books word counters. That being said, ive seen a lot of conflicting opinions from agents on how word count should be donewhether its using the word count key on your computer word processing program or counting pages. 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. Therefore, the word count of a novel is crucial if you want your book to be fit for publication. I was quickly flooded with emails from many an angry author for daring to put a word count on a level of book. Opt already knows how many words opt has in the ms. No more than 90,000 words seems to be the editors mantra these days. Right now, when it comes to novel length word count, its all about 90,000 words.

But for print publishing, the physical cost of producing the book is an issue, and the market does generally know what it likes. We explain two easy methods to estimate your book s page count. Publishers and literary award societies typically consider a novellas word count to be between 15,000 and 40,000 words, although definitions vary. Itll give you the word count in the book s summary when you click on its title. My first book, three times a lady was roughly 100,000 words.

Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. Publisher word count for magazine writing word counter blog. If youre working on a novel length book, aim for 50,000 words at the very least but its better to aim for 90,000. I used the lexham hebrew bible and the nestlealand novum testamentum graece for these word counts. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words.

In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. More recently, though, another colleague, who also wrote a noteworthy book, dismissed this worry of mine about book length as groundless. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Any selfhelp or motivational nonfiction book should be between 30,000 and 70,000 words. I have often looked this up and got different results, which makes it very confusing. These numbers are pulled from the original languages using logos bible softwareyou can see how i did it below. 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.

But for mainstream ya it is always best to stick to under 80k. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. Although, youll notice with the harry potter books the length of each book increases with each release in the series. While its possible to go over or under the 32pages, it is often best to keep to this standard. Oftentimes, professional editing will cut down the unnecessary information so your memoir is the appropriate word count. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. Zi thought less in terms of pages than word count, and suggested i work toward a goal of 100,000 words. To be picked up by a traditional publisher, my manuscript needs to fall in a similar wordcount window. Getting the appropriate story length is essential to getting published. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. This is due in large part to the variety of subgenres within it and the trend for a book series with an ever greater word count.

Customers are used to the 32 page length even if they cant tell you an exact count. How to find word count on your favorite novels nathan. This post covers why word count matters for novels, the standard word. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. However, book length varies widely between genres, among authors, and based on the content of the book. If perhaps it had even more pictures it would be even a lot better. Although hir book was just under 300 pages, which is more of an industry standard, it seems. The most important thing here is to realize that there are always exceptions to these rules. Word count for novels and books is something i dont think about too often until i travel to a writers conference, and then someone asks a simple, innocent question. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. This is a general list of age categories and word counts for childrens books. An ebook could be 3,000 words or as long as a full length book.

The english word novella derives from the italian novella, feminine of novello, which means new. If you search the internet for novel length, you will mostly receive the standard. Lets take a quick tour of copy fitting, casting off and related issues here. Ive looked at articles that say literary agents wont consider a book with a word count of over 100 000, so you can see why im a little concerned. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. What is the ideal word count for a nonfiction book in the.

Aug 05, 2019 coyne uses the nanowrimo wordcount length of 50,000 words for his examples, calling 50,000 words a good foundation to build upon. I have therefore made some averages, based on what ive heard from publishers and agents at childrens book events, and from research and reading. Young adult fiction allows for a lot of flexibility in word count. It sounds like i need to expand the length of the book a bit and make. Sep 06, 2014 according to chuck sambuchino see below for word count. Like everything in writing, you may write a work of genius that smashes all the rules. Many attendees myself included were surprised to learn that some editors even refuse to read picture book manuscripts that exceed 500 words. Jan 14, 20 the book will be part of a trilogy, and although ive only written little over half of the entire thing, the estimated word count is looking to be nearly 300 000 words. Ya manuscripts can have a word count anywhere from 55k to 90k. The typical book s words perpage count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. If youre hoping to land a book deal with a traditional publisher, you dont want to give an editor a reason to turn your book away.

Im curious about your advice compose the novel in the standard format from the start rather than changing it later why does this matter. Ive put together word counts for every book of the bible. Ive heard that some people actually dont sell a single book and thats probably the reason why i want to take a stab at it with something relatively short that wont take too long to write. Editors have very specific guidelines for the types of stories they publish and those types all have specific word count ranges. 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. You can use comparable, successful books as models to determine the length you book should be. Estimate your page count book designer fiona raven. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. If you are looking to submit a manuscript, i got the impression that many lit agentspublishers prefer picture book submissions in the 300500 word count range. Every category will have an average length, including childrens books, young adult, business books, etc. If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words at the very least but its better to aim for 90,000. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 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. See my later post for a detailed explanation and instructions on how to calculate book length.

With digital books as well as print books available today, the length of manuscripts has begun to vary considerably. Aug 28, 2006 it is a way an author can estimate word count, but its just as easy these days to use the word count function on your average word processing program to get a pretty accurate count. Under length books are often regarded with suspicion by scholars. Let me tell you about how i had to remove my membership from a childrens writer forum because i responded to a newbie about this topic. Flash fictionwhatever the editor says it is, but usually under 1,000 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. But if youre curious to see how your manuscript measures up to to the standard word count expectations for your genre, the following is a summary of an informative article by chuck sambuchino called word count. And some books are simply shorter, following basic reading trends. Word count for book series the first book in each series below was the authors first. Books falling outside the standard range of 272320 pages can be problematic. Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a.

Sep 12, 2012 put a title the exact title in the search engine, then click on the title, or one of the titles if more than one comes up. I have tried searching the words word count plus the title of a novel, like the lovely bones, and all i get is the word count of essays and articles about the book in question, not for the book itself. Id guesstimate that nonfiction books generally yes, this is very rough run perhaps 150450 pages, and at about 350 wdpage that works out to something like 50150k words. However if youre curious to see what the average word count is for standard genres, check out the breakdown in the article. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. I tend to be a very unconventional author when it comes to chapter length and word count for the entire novel. Your job is to write a good story, and that means including all the detail needed to to make it good, and to leave out anything extraneous. A short story has a word count of under 20,000 words though anything over 10,000 puts it into that no mans land along with novellas where its a long slog for a short story but too short for anything resembling a novel. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. With that in mind, ive tried to put together the definitive post on word count for fiction novels, young adult, middle grade, childrens books and even memoir. I mean, sure, they have to create an entirely different universe in some cases, that takes description, but, i do struggle with reading really long books, and usually end up skimming some of the descriptive narrative parts. Some books have chapters that are too short, they dont expand the idea enough for you to understand. Heres our word count guide for 18 different book genres. Jun 20, 2009 how can i find out the total word count of a book.

On the macro level in any type of edit, but especially a wordtrimming one, you always want to start with the big picture. It should be enough to communicate your message effectively. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. Before you decide your average chapter length, its a good idea to think about the purpose behind dividing a book into chapters. Unfortunately they dont have all books, but they do have the most popular ones.

This is a work in progress, and will be updated throughout the next few weeksmonthsyears. The easiest way, ive heard to publish and sell your book on the net is by publishing it on amazon and selling it on amazons kindle store. You should be aware that word count standards differ vastly by genre. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. 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. Apr 07, 2012 story length has come up a lot recently, both with readers of the editors blog and with clients so, lets look a bit at story length. Go to that books page and scroll down to inside this book. Since 2011, the average length of a bestseller has dropped steadily from year to year. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. I generally write horrorfantasy, as a result much more description is required to properly tell the story.

I consider myself a student of life, so i selected student and continued on. Theres no point in obsessing about word choice if your story has whole scenes and whole subplots you can axe. Everything you need to know about word count and book length for books and novels and memoirs and. There are some easy ways to find the word count for a published bookonline bookstores. Because it allows me to check out length for published books in my genre. But the word count of a chapter matters if you want your story to flow right. Your best bet is to go to a good childrens bookstore and look at books like your own in terms of target audience. What is a reasonable estimate for the minimum length, in word count, for a nonfiction book. Below is the reason why we decided it was important to include a publisher word count in the details section for those who will be submitting their writing for publication.

I think it mostly only has kids ie ya and younger books. From this point, search for your book, click on the title within the list of results, and on the following page youll find the book s word count. Heres how i worked out the word count i literally counted the words in a cathy kelly book, a sheila oflanagan book and a marian. Word count limits sometimes seem as though they are stifling artistic flow, but they are usually there for a reason, says freelance editor lisa howard. Odd thomas 108,9 the face of fear 60,8 the bad place 146,472. Novelist jane smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel. Jun 15, 2017 this is a general list of age categories and word counts for childrens books. Coyne uses the nanowrimo word count length of 50,000 words for his examples, calling 50,000 words a good foundation to build upon. A way to check word count of published books anita nolans blog. When it comes to chapter length and layout, my rule is uniform throughout all my works.

I put in anne of green gables and clicked on the first entry, and it listed the word count as 17,129. Surely when writing the important thing is to get words on the page even if theyre in pink comic sans. In other words, its about figuring page space and not word count. 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.

If your story justifies the length, you neednt worry if you get up to 150,000 words. Publishers are probably more open to this approach, since when you become more established, theres less risk for them with bigger books. 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. Calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. Multiply up by the number of pages and get to a rough word count. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count.

On one level, you could argue that word count, or length, is probably the last thing a fiction writer should worry about. Standard word counts for books publishing with kindle. 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. A short story has a word count of under 20,000 words though anything over. I dont need one of those equations to help calculate word count based on the number of pages times whatever. So if youre writing a series, start small, then increase the word count with each release. For this reason, its not surprising that aspiring authors have questions about the appropriate length of a manuscript. Draft your novel in standard format from the start.

Learn the average wordcount for every type of novel, novella, genre, etc. If youre new to selfpublishing on amazon and wondering, just how much should i write for my kindle book. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. If the book offers more complicated instructions such as for creating an origami bird or a fashionable paper doll, the word count can extend as high as 1,500 words. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. 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. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. There is a simple reason that may not seem obvious at first, but it makes a lot of sense once its pointed out. Whats a normal word count for a childrens novel or collection.