In most cases, industry standard preferred length is 250 words per page. For print books, a massmarket paperback runs around 300350 words per page. How many words in a middlegrade book 20,000 55,000. Book printing costs for printondemand mill city press. Keep the type and elements that you dont want trimmed off at least 38. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. The point is that the perpage count is an estimate that will average out over time, and its good enough for most purposes.
The third answer, because its a page count, not a word count. The typical books wordsperpage count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. Jan 08, 2018 now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic. Yes, its possible to break this model by having lots of staccato dialog, or paragraphs that are more than 250 words long, but those are extreme cases. How many words are in the average 400 page novel answers. These are basic learning books that creatively teach colors, numbers or simple, fun stories for bedtime. The ensuing common types of files often result in an average number of pages per gigabyte and megabyte. Aug 05, 2019 the average singlespaced document typed in 12point font contains about 500 words per page, but that can vary pretty drastically depending on your formatting. Writing for children age categories determine the guidelines for your childrens book at suite 101. Continuing the exercise, assume each book contains 100,000 words a reasonable estimate, and the goal is to read one book a month.
You may read faster or slower depending on your reading speed, but in general adults typically read at about 300 words per minute wpm when reading for pleasure. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Learn how to estimate your page count and how long your book should. Some 6090k ya books get classified as hilo, but i dont think they were specifically written for the category. You can explore the other trim sizes we offer on our pod trim sizes page. One thing to keep in mind with how many pages is words is that it depends on the text, its size, and the spacing youre using. Stephen king word count 112263 274,672 bag of bones 203,3 black house 252,270 blockade billy 15,917 carrie 60,718 cell 121,931 christine 193,602 cujo 121,150 cycle of the werewolf 15,955 desperation 195,011 doctor sleep.
Trim size will also influence how many words you can fit on a page, and therefore how many pages your book will have. At 300 wpm, that comes to another 11 minutes a day. You can estimate the audio length of your book by dividing the total word count by 9,300. For instance, my novel runs about 101,000 words, which i would estimate at 101,000 300 336 pages. When you query a publisher, its customary to include your novels estimated word count. At one extreme you get large print books with 250 words on the page. Both rules of thumb are imperfect, but weve found the 250300 word per page rule works better more often than the 60 percent per page rule. Now we have computers and word processing software. To fill a page in word, you would need around 500 words, 1. Depending on the text formatting, a page word count may include from 200 large print up to 600 words academic book. So, if you have an hour to write and aim to get down 300 words, you might wonder, how.
Academic books might put 600 words on a page with works of reference squeezing in words. The page doublespaced on the right fills less than half the page. Assuming you use the standard conventions for manuscript format 1 margins, 25 doublespaced lines per page, and a 12 point nonproportional font like courier, then a good rule of thumb is one page equals 250 words for the mathimpaired, that means you multiply the number of. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. This number can vary depending on if youre writing dialogue or how short each paragraph is. For manuscripts, the answer is about 250300 words per page if it is doublespaced. That said, if your book is around 40,000 words, youre in good company. Having some reallife examples at your side, you should get a better sense of.
Using amazons number of words as a guide, 5,000 words would equal 26. Dec 10, 2015 the first five years of bookerwinning novels average out at around 300 pages, but even taking into account julian barness 2011 triumph with his 160page novella the sense of an ending, the. That being said, this range is true for most booksalways do the research into comparable books and price your book accordingly. What is the generally accepted number of words per page for a published novel.
Apr 11, 2015 stephen king word count 112263 274,672 bag of bones 203,3 black house 252,270 blockade billy 15,917 carrie 60,718 cell 121,931 christine 193,602 cujo 121,150 cycle of the werewolf 15,955 desperation 195,011 doctor sleep. It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in general, 250300 words per page. When talking about book length, its common to talk about word count rather than. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. A trade paperback 6x9 or hardcover runs around 350400 depending on. If you want to experiment with book sizes and the way they might impact your typesetting choices, the reedsy book editor allows you to do so for free.
For starters, the average count for a page in a book is 250300 depending upon its trim size, margins, and font size. You can figure out the finished runtime based on the word count. Assuming you use the standard conventions for manuscript format 1 margins, 25 doublespaced lines per page, and a 12 point nonproportional font like courier, then a good rule of thumb is one page equals 250 words. Hilo books for upper elementary grades at ala example titles ranging from 1090k words. Jun 27, 2019 a story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. So, a 55,000word manuscript is about 220 typeset pages, and a 100,000word manuscript is about 400 typeset pages. Although it can vary, with a conventional page setuptimes new roman or arial 12 point font and default margins400 words.
Amazons initial estimate would run 101,000 325 310 pages. May 04, 2018 for starters, the average count for a page in a book is 250300 depending upon its trim size, margins, and font size. In practice you need to subtract 1520% from the page word total once the white space is taken into account. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. The dimensions from the spine calculator include a 18. Nobodys stopping you, of course especially if you think your 100,000word novel justifies the word count. Jun, 2011 as basic info, you need to know the word count, not the page count, of the book you would narrate. To answer the immediate question, lets look at some numbers. If you want to see what size book is selling in your genre, take a look on the shelves.
The editor also provides four popular trim sizes for formatting 4. These questions made us fill the need of a book page count calculator we put at the bottom of this page. 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. All book publishers and book designers have a standard they go by to estimate page length. If you read 300 words per minute, then you will able to read one page in 4960 seconds.
Dec 22, 2005 clarification of answer by pinkfreudga on 22 dec 2005. These figures represent continuous words with no blank lines or breaks. How many words per page are there in a typical novel. On average, young adult novels usually fall around 55,000 and 70,000 words. 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. A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. I believe amazon starts with an estimate in the 325wpp range, but then maps numbers of page turns in ebooks to generate an approximate page count. For a firsttime novelist, it might be a little hard to pitch your ya manuscript to editors if your word count exceeds that number. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words. A word count of 400 words will result in around fourfifths of a page single spaced and and one and threefifths of a page double spaced.
On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. Now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic. Roughly 250 words per page, times the amount of pages makes 75,000 words. Count characters and words with the anycount tool for a precise estimate and get every single cent youve earned. Estimate your page count book designer linda parke. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers around 50,00070,000 words. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. The post lists a dizzying number of genres and a recommended word count range for each. Book spine calculator book thickness calculator what. So a 400 page manuscript would be about 240,000 words.
For instance, audible uses an average rate of speed of 155 words a minute, or 9300 words per finished hour. The industry standard for a manuscript page, however, is a firm 250 words. The 250wordsperpage rule is a copysetting estimate. Most agree that under 1,000 words would be rather short and that over 5,000 might be rather too long. So that comes out to about 400 a page and then factor in the double spacing and you get to 250 or so. The average single spaced page has about 800 words and a double spaced page usually has about 400 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. Just to keep in mind, the average one spaced page usually contains about 3000 characters or 500 words. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel.
Once the book is bound, it gets trimmed, and at this stage the 18 bleed is trimmed off. How to find how many words are in your novel so far. This translates into just 20,000 to 25,000 words for a 100 page book, 30,000 to 42,500 words for a 150 page book, perhaps just 40,000 words for a 200 page book. Simply divide the total word count from your word document by the number of words per page. 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. Lewis the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, roald dahls charlie and the chocolate factory.
Although it can vary, with a conventional page setuptimes new roman or arial 12 point font and default margins400 words should be the same across most word processing software. When i write technical articles, theyre usually 600 words and about a page and a half. Therefore, a 3,000 word page is 48 pages, depending on the spaces. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot. The historian by elizabeth kostova is around that size and it weighs in at 900 pages in paperback. So, if you have an hour to write and aim to get down 300 words, you might wonder, how many pages is 300 words and the answer is less than one. The first five years of bookerwinning novels average out at around 300 pages, but even taking into account julian barness 2011 triumph with his 160page novella the sense of an ending, the. 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. If the average length is 300 pages, youre looking at a 75,000 word manuscript approximately. General rule of thumb is that a novel is 80k to 100k, but you can have 120k on larger novels. While a general guideline is one page is 500 words single spaced or 250 words double spaced, this is a ballpark figure. Most ebooks i see are double spaced, which makes their pages clearer but also reduces the number of words per page. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words.
As a general guideline, chapters should be between 3,000 to 5,000 words. 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 set the retail price of your book mill city press. The amount of words on a single page varies depending on the size and margins of the page, but generally its 250 words per page. Mine ran anywhere from less than five pages to more than fifty. 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.
For example, if your book is 50,000 words, your audiobook would be approximately 5. I wrote a book actually, many books, then found a guide called jeff hermans. As basic info, you need to know the word count, not the page count, of the book you would narrate. A manuscript for a novel is typically 500 words per page if singlespaced. Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. Targeted for 2 to 8yearold kids, this type of book typically has between 400 800 words. Books can be as short as 25,000 words, around 100 pages, or as long as 3 million words, or about 1,000 pages. 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.
Pauls article shows you a formula to calculate finished time. The average singlespaced document typed in 12point font contains about 500 words per page, but that can vary pretty drastically depending on your formatting. Goodreads authorsreaders meet your next favorite book. If the average length is 300 pages, youre looking at a. The list was revised in september 2010 in consultation with a number of us fiction editors, but. This translates into just 20,000 to 25,000 words for a 100 page book, 30,000 to 42,500 words for a 150page book, perhaps just 40,000 words for a 200page book. While theres no reliable statistic, heres an interesting post on word count from the blog of former agent colleen lindsay. I would expect typical text whatever that is set in 12 point times new roman to contain approximately 600 words 4000 characters per page. Writing for reluctant readers at writing world stated count of 4001200 words. Authors often ask me about average word lengths for their manuscripts. Book spine calculator book thickness calculator what is a. 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.