Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. Typically, a noun is made plural by adding an s to the end. Depending on your book, some steps may be unnecessary for example, your book doesnt have images. 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. A noncount noun is a person, place, or thing that do not have a plural form. For some content writers or bloggers, hitting their word count is a pain. Search for word count totals in books word counters. For more general information on childrens book manuscript length. So itll be off on occasion, but it should get you relatively close for the average book. These templates are available in several varieties. A preface, which is included in the front matter of a book, is your chance to speak directly to your readers about why you wrote the book, what its about, and why its important. Since opinions vary greatly, i did some research to verify the numbers in my head.
And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is. 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. The book fold layout sets you up for printing your masterpiece automatically in the correct order, ready for folding and binding. This is due to the audience youre reaching preferring that length. Word count, with a little help from amazon alexis grant. In the apply to list, select whole document and click ok.
Word count examples in real books could you let me know the word count of some common books and novellength guidelines. A word count tool to help you estimate your word count. There are a number of factors deciding the word count, topmost being what sort of book it is. If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words at the very least but its better to aim for 90,000. For a few examples, lets start on the low end of word count where we have the great gatsby clocking in at approx. The best research tool is to read lots of books and see which publishers print books at which lengths. On the layout tab, in the page setup group, click size, and then select more paper sizes. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. If playback doesnt begin shortly, try restarting your device. Precise word count definitions will vary, but as a general rule of thumb, a short story is anything up to about 7500 words sometimes 10,000, with higher word counts typically called novelettes, and short novels called novellas. Last year i wrote an adult series under this name which i overhauled and made more adult, it was only going to be a three book series of novellas 120 hand written pages each, 41,904 to 47,030 words but i added a fourth at about half the word count of 26,143 words which is the conclusion to all three stories. Whether you want to create a booklet for an event or print out an ambitious book project, consider using the prebuilt page settings for booklets that comes with word.
It seems like ya novels are getting longer and longer nowadays, but maybe my attention span is getting shorter. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. Coyne uses the nanowrimo word count length of 50,000 words for his examples, calling 50,000 words a good foundation to build upon. This question about how to write early readers, easy chapter books, and chapters book on the blog comes from mary. For others, making sure that they dont go over the word count can be a chore especially if their editor is strict about not going over that number. That often dreaded, while at the same time appreciated, element of freelance writing. To help you format your manuscript, we created templates in microsoft word into which you can insert your content. Coyne uses the nanowrimo wordcount length of 50,000 words for his examples, calling 50,000 words a good foundation to build upon. That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king. Heres a quick word count guide for adult fiction, adult sff, young adult contemporary, young adult sff, and middle grade. Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book.
If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. Generally i consider any novel that is less than 300 pages to be a short one, 500 page a medium sized novel and anything more than 750 a lengthy novel. This resizes your pages and changes your page count, which you need to know for setting your margins. The first book is around 7,600 words and the second book is around 6,800 words. Count up the total number of words on 10 random full lines from different places and divide by 10 to get the average wordsperline count the number of lines on each page to get the linesperpage check that the book actually starts on page 1 sometimes the stuff before it starts is counted then. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Books in this genre are also often gag gifts or are meant to be facetious. Childrens books need to be engaging and pleasant to the eyes. I use amazons data feeds to come up with the calculation. If youre writing an adult fantasy novel or an epic fantasy novel like game of thrones, your word count can skew higher at 90,000 200,000 words.
I created this website to help you better gauge your books word count, because the more examples you see and the more advice you read, the more confident youll be. Its not every day you run into someone whose specialty is back cover copy for your book. I previously used the running time of the associated audiobook to do the calculation, and it was quite accurate. For example, atonement has a word count of 123,378 and my utility comes up with 110,765 words. Everything you need to know about novel word counts nathan. The captivating features and vibrant colors of a childrens book are what will attract a child to pick it up. In this article, were going to look at how many words are in the harry potter series. Onethird of the novels that come into the agency are rejected because theyre too long or short, perkins says.
To make it easy for authors, we have a variety of unique eyecatching, readytouse childrens book templates. A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which i. 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. I tried lots of things, but until i got to the magic phrase, which turned out to be word count meter, most of my searches. For the best results, follow the five steps in this guide.
Many books dont require one, especially works of fiction, but if youre wondering how to write a preface, heres an overview. Click librarian or teacher and then search for books like yours click on the titles to get all kinds of info about them, including wordcount. Some resources like nanowrimo say novels can be 50,000, some books say 80,000 is average, and i just read an online article that said 120,000 is the upper end of the comfortable range for beginner novelists that. That said, this figure differs from book to book and organization to. For full titles, authors and descriptions of these books, see whats on my travel memoir bookshelf. A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which i enjoy with my whole heart. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words.
The actual word count for the hunger games is 99,750 and my utility calculates 94,743 words. We are also going to look at how harry potter is comparable to other young adult novels in regards to word count. She can tell some really good whoppers and one of those whoppers is putting a cat in a coffin so it would move the gause and the lid of the coffin to make it seem. And i believe pams book is good enough to one day be in that category. I also include word counts from some best sellers in. I agree that it seems like for a debut author, the agent really looks at that word count. You have just discovered the wonderful world of bibliographic metadata. Within short stories, there is a further breakdown to define supershort stories as flash and microflash. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. That said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally lies between 100,000 and 115,000. The eight harry potter books have an impressive combined word count of over 1 million words. I just popped into my office and pulled a few books off the shelf.
While page counts are a common but not universal feature of bibliographic metadata, word counts are much less frequently provided and are not at all mandatory. Hilo books for upper elementary grades at ala example titles ranging from 1090k words. For nonfiction books, word count guidelines are more flexible, sometimes even double the word counts listed here. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. Enter your books trim size into the width and height fields. 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. A long way from chicago, by richard peck, has three main characters joey\joe, mary alice, and the worst influence ever, their grandma. Word counts for childrens books i received a request awhile ago to do a post on word counts for different age categories in childrens lit. Our editing and proofreading services are active and fully functioning despite the current global pandemic. For the classic picture book group, i realize that 48 is a pretty big age range.
In a typical contemporary book, you will have between 60,000 and 90,000 words. Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the great gatsby, and slaughterhousefive are between 4050,000 words. Dont let the word count dictate what you want to write, but definitely keep it in mind. One popular example of a contemporary novel is simon vs. There are no hardandfast rules when it comes to what word count a novel in a particular genre should be. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. Where can i find a database of all published books word. Novelist jane smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel.
Many of these books are written in rhyme or in a simple singsong meter that is catchy and fun. Word counts of the most popular books in the world foster grant uk. If youre writing a young adult fantasy novel, you should keep your word count below 90,000 words or 300 book pages. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a wordcount guideline. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. The graphic looks at the length of some famous novels, poems, and plays from literary history. Build your book format a paperback manuscript word for. If youve ever read a joke book or a book revolving around a humorous endeavor of some sort, it falls under this book category. Your best bet is to figure out what books yours is comparable to, then sit down and count the words on 23 typical pages. These lines from sorrows of werther were generated by to give an idea of what different word counts look like on the screen.
I went to another conference and told an agent about my chapter books series with the word count ranges and she was like thats kind of short for a chapter book. More recently the fault in our stars comes in at 67,000. Count nouns, sometimes called countable nouns, have both singular and plural forms. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook.
These are basic learning books that creatively teach colors, numbers or simple, fun stories for bedtime. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Well, while the accelerated reader program is lame in a lot of ways, this is a very handy tool. Odd thomas 108,9 the face of fear 60,8 the bad place 146,472. To find pretty much any kids ya word count, you can use the ar bookfinder. Im leaving this in the list to show that word count isnt offered for every book. This is one of the most important pieces of copy youll write, since it has a lot of work to do representing your book and showing people whats unique, interesting, or especially valuable about what you. Author eve tells me her book came in at 95,000 words.