Typical book length in words

Smiley lists novels as typically being between 100,000 and 175,000 words, while national novel. All book publishers and book designers have a standard they go by to estimate page length. If the topic really justifies length and especially if your credentials are highly impressive you can go longer, but check that you remain interesting, even at length. The important thing is that your length fits your book.

One of the benefits of writing in scene form is that the ending of a scene provides a place for the reader to comfortably take a pause. Jeannette wallss the glass castle, which must be more than. I was scared that agents would reject my book simply because i had got the length wrong. You may wonder when to use a short scene versus a long scene. If the muse moves you, dont be afraid to write posts that are 2,000 words or more. Jun 03, 2009 as far as length, popular memoirs range quite a bit from about 60,000 words to 120,000 or more. If youre a new author, id recommend staying on the shorter side, perhaps around the 75,000 word mark. Novels for adult readers fall between 80,000 and 120,000 words. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. Everything you need to know about word count and book length for books and novels and memoirs and childrens novels and picture books. That said, each manuscript should be long enough to adequately tell its story or. I think you need to have an awful lot of compelling material, masterfully told, in order to write a memoir of that length or longer. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. With that in mind, ive tried to put together the definitive post on word count for fiction novels, young adult, middle grade, childrens.

If theres a business book you admire, why not count the pages, tot up the words on an average page, and see how long it is in total. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers around 50,00070,000 words. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. 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. In a typical contemporary book, you will have between 60,000 and 90,000 words. The length can vary greatly between genres, though. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages. That means your manuscript must be at least 3540,000 words long. By most peoples standards, 40,000 words would be pretty short for a novel. But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer, lengths may also vary by subgenre. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words at the very least but its better to aim for 90,000.

On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. Why does the length of a typical novel fall in the 80. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. If you know how long the book is, you can divide it into eighths.

Targeted for 2 to 8yearold kids, this type of book typically has between 400 800 words. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. Write as much as it takes to tell the story, and no more. Keep in mind what that post length will likely bring to your blog, and vary your lengths so you can best serve your readers. Jul 23, 2012 of course, a printed book probably needs to be at least 100125 pages in length.

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. So, do this for some books in your field, find one that matches the same depth and detail that you want to attain for your book, and give yourself an estimate based on that. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. How long should your blog post be the write practice. These are basic learning books that creatively teach colors, numbers or simple, fun stories for bedtime. Oct 18, 2017 from these numbers, we can establish some guidelines. At the same time, dont feel bad if you want to write a post thats just 200 words long. However, many authors, frustrated with the low price of ebooks, have taken to writing ebooks that are between 40,000 and 50,000. T he indie author chris fox coined the term potato chip chapters for easilydigestible book chapters of a certain size. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. If youre drawn to writing much shorter tales, the ideal is to make them part of a series or to link them in some other way so that you can publish several of them in something vaguely novelsized. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 to 75,000 words, but this can vary depending upon category.

Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. The golden extent for many publishers is 288 pages about 90100,000 words without tables or figures. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. Books with much shorter sections become bestsellers all the time. Since 2011, the average length of a bestseller has dropped steadily from year to year. 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. 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. 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.

You might be more surprised if a ya novel required olympianlevel arm strength to lift. Does this mean that every chapter must end up somewhere in this range. Before diving into the specifics of genrebased word counts, lets look at the broader picture of average book length. In fact, the majority of printed books are turned into ebooks. Publishers want to know the overall length of your book. This type of book should not go more than 200 pages, so 40,000 words is probably your max. One rule of thumb is you can get 60 percent of a manuscript page into one typeset page said manuscript being in 12point type, doublespaced, preferably times new roman, with oneinch margins on an 8.

Hence, a manuscript not a published book of 200 pages is figured at 250 wpp x 200 pages 50,000 words. A single novel can be longer, but once the length is above 110,000 words publishers may. 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. If you know how long the book is, you can divide it into eighths to find the perfect timing for all your major turning points. Oct 27, 2018 chapter length matters more than you think. A 40,000 to 80,000word memoir is around 150265 pages, a standard booklength for the genre. Oct 10, 2016 the right answer to how long should my book be. Literary agent danielle zigner takes a look at typical novel lengths and what. Also, heres another list i may swipe and add in here.

Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. Oct 01, 2012 lets talk about an issue thats sure to rise up in your mind. Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. Mar 20, 2020 an ebook could be 3,000 words or as long as a full length book. I have often looked this up and got different results, which makes it very confusing. How to calculate your books length before writing helping. I have therefore made some averages, based on what ive heard from publishers and agents at childrens book events, and from research and reading. If you search the internet for novel length, youll mostly receive the standard advice that a novel should fall somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 words. If this thread still going can someone tell me how many words is reasonable for a chapter im writing my first fantasy novel and worried if i have too short or to long of a chapter right now my first chapter word count is at 1,436 and in counting.

Long book length at the other end of the spectrum a book of 80,000 to 100,000 words has significant heft, 320400 pages. 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. Then consider writing a manuscript of similar length. One popular example of a contemporary novel is simon vs. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words.

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. Less than 100 pages and it becomes difficult for a printer to print the title of the book on the spine. Because yes, different types of books require different book lengths. That said, if your book is around 40,000 words, youre in good company. 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. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. This is a general list of age categories and word counts for childrens books. A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. Put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. 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. Sep 12, 2018 by book do you mean novel or nonfiction. The most common rule for a memoir is that it should not go more than 80,000 words. An approximate word count round numbers based on what your wp tells you enables them to estimate costs and other factors involved in printing a book.

In north america, the standard used by editorial staff in figuring word count is 250 words per page, 10 words per line using a 12 pt. As an editor, im always a bit wary of getting into word counts, because a manuscript should be the length that it is because thats the length that works, and not because the author trimmed 217 words to get down to 700. All we have to do is use the wp tool that shows word count. If you analyse the contents of a typical bookshelf in an academic library, you will notice that many of the books are between 272 and 320 pages in length. If you dont know how to find your documents word count, this article shows you how. However sometimes, like today, the reverse happens. This seems a reasonable limit even for the established authors, as its about the length of the average novel. Word count for novels and childrens books writers digest.

Sep 16, 2019 the rules are continually evolving, so theres no need for you to feel constrained by some unwritten law that says your book needs to be of a certain length. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. For most publishers, a book is novel length when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. This book has 144 pages, so it contains about 28,800 words. Ya novels are rarely over 75k, historical novels go up to 120k, ditto speculative fiction. If you picked up a scifi or historical novel from a bookshelf, you wouldnt be surprised if it was pretty hefty and probably had a dragon on the cover. Of course, rules are made to be broken, especially in literature. Most editors wouldnt recommend going over 80,000, as it will inspire bad taste among readers. May 14, 2018 literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction.