Simply divide the total word count from your word document by the number of words per page. Rowlings recordbreaking series began with two titles on the high end of that spectrum and finished with five that left the guidelines in the dust. Now we have computers and word processing software. Generally speaking, traditional publishers expect completed nonfiction book. Although science fiction and some other genres have been creeping up and can now exceed 400 pages 200,000 words. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot. Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. My picture books have ranged from 147 words to 1,400 words. Jul 23, 2012 that said, the average adult novel is 100,000, and most publishers for most categories want novels ranging from 80120,000 but some categories run shorter.
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. Harry potter and the deathly hallows 198,000 words. T he indie author chris fox coined the term potato chip chapters for easilydigestible book chapters of a certain size. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. Go out and find similar books to the one you want to write and figure out how many words are in the book. This should capture the authors writing style and provide a reliable estimate of the number of words used by the. How many words in a novel vary depending on genre, audience, and the story itself but in general, the average words in a novel is between 60,000 and 90,000 words for most genres. Average nonfiction word counts biographies and memoirs. I conduct all my work under the philosophy that a book is only as long as it needs to be, and it does not matter if the book is fiction or nonfiction. Publishers ultimately decide what length is proper for a particular book.
You can sign in to give your opinion on the answer. And dont forget to calculate what your word count will be. A typical popular business book runs 25,000 to 75,000 words. But, most non fiction publishers want to be sold the concept, and therefore be able to discuss the direction of the project, before you write the book. One of my biggest problems as a publisher is having authors deliver more than was agreed to. Now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic. A book can be 25,000 words and still be of incredible value if it is priced appropriately. Depending on your genre, having too many or too little can not only hurt your book sales. Nonfiction authors dont always benefit from pricing lower.
The grandfather of modern christian fiction, in his steps by charles m. Count up the total number of words on 10 random full lines from different places and divide by 10 to get the average wordsperline. Nonfiction book 25,000 150,000 words fiction novella 18,00040,000. In 2015, the drop resumed as the average fell to 345.
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. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts. In all cases, you can find an author who has successfully pushed the envelope one way or another. Nov 07, 2016 and one advantage with ebook publishing is that you can adjust your pricing at any time. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and. Still unsure of how long to make your nonfiction book. Jun 07, 2017 in my opinion, if your nonfiction book is fewer than about 30,000 words 120 pages, it does not feel substantial enough to be real book. By 2017, however, that number has dropped to 273 pages. Use these numbers as a baseline for your writing goals. Short and punchy books are 40,000 to 60,000 words, but many nonfiction books are lengthy. More important is whether or not your book reads like a picture book succinct, musical, pictorial. A nonfiction book attractive to publishers of bestsellers starts at around 75,000 words. 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.
In fiction, a short book is between 50,000 to 80,000 words roughly 200 300 pages in paperback. Most traditional publishers will place restrictions on an author and require that the manuscript not exceed a specified word count, unless special concessions are made. Setting the retail price for your book shouldnt be an arbitrary decision. That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king. This is a composite taken from a number of publishing industry websites. How to set the retail price for your nonfiction book. The best guideline you can follow is to make your book as long as it needs to be and no longer. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to. The average sales per title are utterly without meaning. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price for the translation job. Books range from several words to several thousand compare goodnight moon to the polar express. 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.
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. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing stack. Less than 100 pages and it becomes difficult for a printer to print the title of the book on the spine. One of the most sobering factors that impacts book sales is the sheer number of books released each year over 2 million new titles were released worldwide last year verses how many books people actually read each year. 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. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to be. A 90,000 word count signals to professionals that you know what you are doing. The 1 thing you need to do to write a new york times. Once you have a vision for your booksmall, standard, or wide formatyou can move on to the second step in deciding how many words you should write. New word count guidelines for contemporary fiction and nonfiction. The art of the nonfiction book proposal writers relief. Aug 05, 2019 for most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. This is a baked in feature we should engineer into all our writing. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction.
But i also know of others who have sold over 500,000 copies. The figure was found through looking at a number of books text stats. And for every book that sells 20,000, there is one that is a disaster. Sep 20, 2019 how many words in a novel vary depending on genre, audience, and the story itself but in general, the average words in a novel is between 60,000 and 90,000 words for most genres. A key issue is the fact that picture books are 32 pages storybooks. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 words. This number was significantly different from the average we had seen for the estimated print length that had been given in. Jun 24, 2019 be aware that the word average means that for every book that sells 15,000, there is one that sells 5,000. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. You would be wise to come close to these suggested. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000 word range. Jenkins started strongly but weakened, along with the.
Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. If you want to get a target for your non fiction book, the best thing may be to look at a dozen or so bestselling books in the genreniche youre aiming at and see what their word counts are. Sometimes, however, i incorporate more than one scene in a chapter and thus the number may double. 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. In my opinion, if your nonfiction book is fewer than about 30,000 words 120 pages, it does not feel substantial enough to be real book.
Learn more about miranda at the end of this post, and learn more about the workshop here. Sep 03, 2017 amazons most sold charts rank books according to the number of copies sold and preordered through, amazon books stores, and books read through digital subscription programs once a customer has read a certain percentage roughly the length of a free reading sample. The third book is the kindle publishing bible and this is the gold mine for marketing. 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. How to make a living with your writing is my shortest non fiction book at 27,000 words and looks fine in print. However, here are some guidelines you will find helpful. Harry potter and the halfblood prince 168,000 words. There is no single formula for calculating the price of a book because there are many considerations.
If your book will contain a number of charts, photographs, or illustrations, say so. The second book is the kindle formatting bible its a step by step guide for formatting books for kindle and also stepbystep instructions on uploading your book to kindle and publishing it. Books can be as short as 25,000 words, around 100 pages, or as long as 3 million words, or about 1,000 pages. The total page count excluding appendices and index is 204 pages, thus about 93,000 words. The typical books wordsperpage count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. You want 50,000 to 85,000 words for a fulllength selfhelp book, half that for a selfpublished ebook. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Using amazons number of words as a guide, 5,000 words would equal 26. Before we go any further, stop thinking about pages. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. There are vastly different numbers for mass market paperback novels, tradepaperback original novels or trade non fiction, hardback original trade books, and for nontrade titles in any of a. The di vinci code 2003 by dan brown is 8,380 words christian book word count.
The average length of a non fiction book is 50,000 words, with some books falling at around 3540,000 words, and others running as long as 70,000. That said, the average adult novel is 100,000, and most publishers for most categories want novels ranging from 80120,000 but some categories run shorter. A question many authors have is how many words are on the average page when it comes to books and ebooks on amazon. You may also describe the general format you envision. To fill a page in word, you would need around 500 words, 1. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. The page doublespaced on the right fills less than half the page. So if you write a 35,000 word manuscript, your formatted book will likely be around. However, be prepared to be flexible when it comes to length and formatthe publisher will have the final say.
But, most nonfiction publishers want to be sold the concept, and therefore be able to discuss the direction of the project, before you write the book. Average the count by taking the total number of words counted and divide by three. Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages.
Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. The art of the nonfiction book proposal writers relief, inc. Long book length at the other end of the spectrum a book of 80,000 to 100,000 words has significant heft, 320400 pages. I know of an author with a very large publisher whose novel has sold only 1,087 copies in its lifetime. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. There are a few book word count guidelines for each genre, but these arent hard and fast rules. Longer word counts allowed for fantasy, scifi, historical.
May 11, 2009 word count and book length one of my biggest problems as a publisher is having authors deliver more than was agreed to. 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. Depending on your genre, having too many or too little can not only hurt your book sales, but also cause fewer 5star. You can use this guideline to help you set a realistic goal for word count, based on the average word counts. At 250 words per page using times roman 12 and oneinch margins, that means theyre usually six to eight pages long. We will be using amazons estimation formula, which is that there are 300350 words in a page they do take into account images as well, if your ebook has those. With longer books, you can get a rough count by adding up the number of words on an average page and multiplying by the total number of pages. Be aware that the word average means that for every book that sells 15,000, there is one that sells 5,000. When writing a book, is there a minimum amount of pages that.
Jun 18, 2008 if your book will contain a number of charts, photographs, or illustrations, say so. All of these are average book word count ranges and should not be taken as the definitive word count you must reach in your book. I use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. In 2011, the average length of a bestselling nonfiction book was 467 pages. Apr 08, 2019 special thanks to miranda paul for this guest post.
For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. Go out and find similar books to the one you want to write and figure out how many words. Sep 29, 2014 he wrote, the number of ebook singles any ebook between 5,000 and 30,000 words in length published in the third quarter increased a whopping 27 percent compared to the second quarter of 20. Average word count ranges from 70,000 to 100,000 words, although biographies of major celebrities or public figures can support a higher number. Count a few lines to determine the average number of words per line or columninch, count the number of columninches, and do your math. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. This information helps you calculate how long your novel or nonfiction work has to be to hit a certain page count on amazon, which is important if youre applying for promotions that require you to be above a certain number of pages to qualify. When writing a book, is there a minimum amount of pages that it should have. It covers all of my core initial free marketing strategies. Obviously, my point is not that you should submit a first book of anywhere near. Some 6090k ya books get classified as hilo, but i dont think they were specifically written for the category. How many words should be in an adult nonfiction book. Feb 24, 2015 sketch out your outline, make sure your structure works, and then start coming up with more clever titles for the chapters and parts, if you use those. A non fiction book attractive to publishers of bestsellers starts at around 75,000 words.
However sometimes, like today, the reverse happens. Over that size is the territory of the academic or technical business book. Know your content, know your mainline pitch and some. A recommended wordcount might be 15002000 words but, more. Generally speaking, traditional publishers expect completed nonfiction book manuscripts to be between 50,000 to 75,000 words. At the other end of the spectrum a book of 80,000 to 100,000 words has significant heft, 320400 pages. Most adult books are about 90,000 words, and no longer than 100,000 words unless youre jk rowling. Mar 17, 2010 the perennial favorite by gary chapman, the five love languages 1995, comes in at only 46,145 words. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. There is no reliable data from 2012 to make a viable yeartoyear comparison. Following are factors to consider when setting the retail price for your book. A fulllength nonfiction book usually contains 9 to 15 chapters of average length. May 14, 2018 with a track record to back them up, established writers have greater flexibility.
It contains 38 lines per page, with an average of 12 words per line, thus 456 words per book page. Miranda is an awardwinning author of more than a dozen fiction and nonfiction books for children. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words. The left behind series original books, not including the prequel, 19952007 by tim lahaye and jerry b. The first alone has sold more than 120 million copies, and the rest have sold at least 65 million each. While the stories of other peoples lives are fascinating, readers dont want to slog through anything that drags on and on. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000 120,000 words. That means your manuscript must be at least 3540,000 words long.