For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. For much of the 20th century, novels averaged 75,000 to 80,000 words, making a book of fewer than 250 pages and sometimes barely 200. You can explore the other trim sizes we offer on our pod trim sizes page. 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. You 50,000 word manuscript may be half the page length of another authors 50,000 word manuscript. Writers digest recommends 80,000 to 89,999 words as a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, womens, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror.
Your annotated guide to the constitution by linda r. Even the complexity of the words you use affects how many words are on a page. Not true i am in the middle of writing a 20 page paper and as of now i have 5,412 words. Anyway, i was wondering how many pages 30,000 words would be. That said, youll probably get a number somewhere between 250 and 350, so your story would come out at between 85 and 120 pages. You can easily calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. May 07, 2018 right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words.
Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. Most standalone novels run between 80,000 and 95,000 words. While a general guideline is one page is 500 words single spaced or 250 words double spaced, this is a ballpark figure. Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. How does your book measure compare to whats succeeding in todays marketplace. Dont combine 3 or 4 completely different scenes and end up with a chapter thats 50 pages long.
Are you writing a slim work of fiction or a 1,000 page doorstopper. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. If youre a wordy writer, you may have pages with a lot more than that. Im thinking that a year would be enough to write a reasonable 100k word book, working on it. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Im already at a little over 65,000 so i was wondering how many pages i could expect to have. It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in general, 250300 words per page. That said, let me speak to a couple other things you mentioned.
This tool is useful when writing essays at university to determine how many pages you are required to write. Mm romance in books with more than 300 pages or 80,000 words. This means your book will be between 100 and 230 pages in total. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Trim size will also influence how many words you can fit on a page, and therefore how many pages your book will have. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. Thus, 100 pages 40,000 to 45,000 words and 200 pages yields 80,000 to 90,000 words for the main body of the text this excludes the words used in the quotations down the sides of the books margins. Line editing, copy editing, indepth improvements to language usage, organization, phrasing, scholarly tone in the case of academic texts, style formatting ap, chicago or mla and feedback on content. The average novel is usually between 80,000 and 100,000 words. Your debut novel is 20,000 words long how not to self. Here is a partial list of wellknown novels that contain roughly 50,000 words, which in turn is roughly 175 pages, and are thus comparable to the average size of a nanowrimo winners novel. Traditional publishers and agents advised using the industry formula for determining word count, which is assuming certain standards 12 pt.
A 40,000 to 80,000word memoir is around 150265 pages, a standard booklength for the genre. A publisher gives the range of 80,000100,000 words for a historical romance. The magic treehouse books are about 5,000 to 12,000 words, depending on which one you pick up. And usually you use the same type of formatting for your font size and family, as well as spacing times new roman 14px, 1. Even if you do not need for medical reason it is a gem to find tens of thousands of words to recite and learn. I have repeatedly used this book for the 5 years and intend to use it for the rest of my life. Why modern novelists need to watch their weight books. May 19, 2008 and ya novels, which have grown in popularity, can often be the same length as a standard novel 80,000 words. And youve probably wondered how long some of your favourite stories are. Depending on the genre of book you are writing, word count can be.
So it took 26 months in all, working in my spare time on evenings, weekends, and during the summer. If a phd research dissertation is 80,000 words, how many. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. And now were seeing some publishers produce book that run from 100,000 to 120,000 words. In other words, the complexity and niche of your work will affect the book editing rate. If you dont know this number, write the first 50 pages of your book, then estimate the average number of words per scene. Nowadays, adult novels generally tend to range from 80k to 120k depending on genre, however, young adult is often closer to the range of a nanowrimo winner, with 6070k being desirable. Thats a good target length if you are writing ya novels or adult novels. Aug 11, 2014 youve just finished writing your book. Times new roman, doublespaced, leftside justified only, 1. How much would it take you to only read 150 books of an average 450 pages per.
My upperlevel ya novel is 211 pages, 61,078 words, tnr 12 pt. No more than 90,000 words seems to be the editors mantra these days. Most editors wouldnt recommend going over 80,000, as it will inspire bad taste among readers. Commercial and literary novels are generally 80,000 to 110,000 words. When i started to work on novels i wanted to keep an estimate of how many words and book pages. My own past research on ya word count turned up 5080,000 as an average guideline. The unbearable lightness of being by milan kundera 85,199 words, the joy luck club by amy tan 91,419 words, song of solomon by toni morrison 97,364 words, anne of green gables by lucy maud montgomery 119,394 words, and sense and sensibility by jane austen. Most stand alone novels run between 80,000 and 95,000 words.
The average book has 64500 words not in book publishing, but id imagine. Of course these are estimates and will vary depending on how you format your work, fontfont size and other factors, but with default margins, and arial or times new roman 12 point font you should see about the same page count. Although the length of fiction is genredependent to an extent fantasy novels, for example, tend to be on the thicker side, sticking to the ideal novel length is still the best advice. Books of smaller word counts were more common in the 1800s and early 1900s, but the trend for books became longer with the rise of modern printing techniques. Aug 05, 2019 for most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. In fact, the finished thesis is going to be quite a bit thicker, as youd expect to have title pages, contents etc, as well as reference lists. A 40,000 to 80,000word memoir is around 150265 pages. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. Of course, word count wont matter if a story doesnt hook the target audience. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. If a book was 30,000 words long, how many pages would that be. Books can be as short as 25,000 words, around 100 pages, or as long as 3 million words, or about 1,000 pages. How many pages does the book the words we live by have. This website converts the number of words to the number of pages, online and for free.
A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. Well explain two easy methods to calculate book page count. That said, if your book is around 40,000 words, youre in good company. If you need to figure out words per page, you can use a words per page calculator. Meanwhile picking the book next to it on the shelf, clash of the sky galleons has roughly 250 words a page, which would bring your total up to around 160 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. Using this exercise, you should end up with a good idea of book length expectations for a novel like yours. Apr 03, 2016 this is only because the book is a pageturner from start to finish. Im sorry to be the one to tell you this, but 20,000 words is not a novel. Now that weve covered how many words are in a novel, its time to break it down even further by finding out the ideal number of chapters in a novel and how many words are used in a typical chapter depending on the writing genre, word count in book chapters can vary considerably. Any selfhelp or motivational nonfiction book should be between 30,000 and 70,000 words. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. But at the last minute, a gal close to pamwith a very good track record herself in publishingread the novel and was adamant that she cut the book down to 80,000 words. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. In outlining your book in 3 easy steps, editor shawn coyne says. Thats not exactly true, but its a good general guideline.
May 22, 2016 assuming double spacing, 250 words per page is a reasonable estimate, so youd be looking at 320 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. Not always true, but there are good chances to find better character and plot development. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. According to my computer, my second book has 62,389 words. How many pages would my manuscript be in paperback. But honestly, ive hit 20k words on just 28 pages for part 3. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. A typical novel is somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 words for atypical novels, the range is more like 40,000 to 250,000 words. The best guideline you can follow is to make your book as long as it needs to be and no longer. However with the help of this 80000 words in pages converter you can get the customs formatting and count the amount of pages.
Editing academic work to a niche style guide will cost more than editing a novel per the chicago manual of style. Words per page is a free online words to pages calculator which converts the numbers of words you write into pages and allows you to change margins, font size and fonts. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages. Find a book thats formatted in the way you imagine your book as being, and count the number of words on a typical page. Assuming that you have 400 words per page roughly correct you. The society of childrens book writers and illustrators scbwi does offer length guidelines in terms of the appropriate number of manuscript pages for various genres meaning the number of pages a writer would submit to a publisher.
I keep hearing that houses are looking for books around 200 pages long. The most common rule for a memoir is that it should not go more than 80,000 words. People are reading more than ever, but theres more competition than ever for those readers attentionand not just with other books. Word counts of the most popular books in the world.
I use microsoft word and a print page is different then a book page. How many pages do 80000 words make if this is your first visit, be sure to check out the faq by clicking the link above. As an author youre competing against online content like blogs and news sites, and against anything readers read. If you already know the average number of words you write per scene, use that figure. Thus, 100 pages 40,000 to 45,000 words and 200 pages yields 80,000 to 90,000 words for the main body of the text this excludes the words used in the quotations down the sides of. Jan 01, 2011 there are too many factors that affect the number of words on a page for a meaningful answer. Thats approximately 300 pages of doublespaced type. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. 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.
If a book was 30,000 words long, how many pages would that. Ive heard that most agents and editors will generally take a query for a first novel more seriously if the word count is between 80,000 and 100,000. Put simply, anything less than 70,000 words or over 110,000 might make publishers think twice before accepting it. The final manuscript was 85,000 words, submitted 6 months after that. May 01, 2018 this feature is not available right now. These page counts may vary depending on how youve formatted your writing, but with a typical setup using default page margins and times new roman or arial 12 point fonts the result should be comparable.
Use our handy table to discover how many pages a given word count yields, single or double spaced, in times new roman or arial 12 point font. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. Plotting a novel by the numbers live write breathe. If youre single spacing your work, 6000 words is close to 12 pages. In all cases, you can find an author who has successfully pushed the envelope one way or another. If so, these books need to be the 7 x 9 trim size, and the slightly larger pages can hold 400 to 450 words per page. Why modern novelists need to watch their weight books the. Feb 18, 2012 why modern novelists need to watch their weight. Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count.
As an avid reader, i dont think a chapter should be based on how many words. Editing a book with hundreds of footnotes or endnotes should cost more than editing a book without citations. The length can vary greatly between genres, though. As previously discussed, there are different requirements for both fiction and nonfiction genres. A 20 page doublespaced paper is about 5000 words, so a 20,000 word paper would be about 80 pages. Also, around 80,000 words is about a 300page novel. The number of pages changes depending on the number of words, the font and the font size. It is a corner stone for speech language pathologist or stutterer in professional or home stuttering therapy. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot. But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer, lengths may also vary by subgenre. If youre a big reader then youve probably read a mixture of very short and very long books in your lifetime. This is only because the book is a page turner from start to finish.
Jan 08, 2018 wondering how many word pages equal a book page. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. Sure there is, sheila the rule of thumb with most publishers is to average about 300 words per page. The jason experiment is 85, 214 words long and the final book is 294 pages. Speaking of thin and fat novels, youre probably wondering how long a novel is, precisely short answer.
However, when you check the word count, it says 20,000 words. Estimate your page count book designer fiona raven. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers around 50,00070,000 words. Learn how to estimate your page count and how long your book should. Writers digest recommends 80,000 to 89,999 words as a 100% safe range for literary. Your tiredness levels suggest that youve written an epic trilogy. I think it should be based on the scene being written about. The paper weight refers to the thickness of a book s interior paper stock. I am writing a short story, and i have my nanowrimo createspace code the actual nano novel was an utter fail and will not be seen by anyone but me.