Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. A good way to gauge appropriate length is to check out similar books for comparison. Your best bet is to figure out what books yours is comparable to, then sit down and count the words on 23 typical pages. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a wordcount guideline. The actual word count for the hunger games is 99,750 and my utility calculates 94,743 words. That said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally lies. 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. Science fiction and fantasy novels break the above word count rules and can be longer how many words are there in a scifi or fantasy novel. Line count varies depending on page size, font size, etc. Im not sure if im pushing the word count over, been trying cut back the word count. That said, this figure differs from book to book and organization to.
Know your content, know your mainline pitch and some. For debut books in this field the average word count tends to be 35k and it has therefore. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the great gatsby, and slaughterhousefive are between 4050,000 words. While average word length is 50,000 to 80,000 words, this genre has so much variety that word count depends on the book and its intended audience. Science fiction and fantasy books should be 90,000 to 125,000 words. In itself, no measure is perfect but personally i find word count the most useful. The author selling the most copies was a scholastic author published only in softcover hello, scholastic school market. Apr 23, 2018 standard word count ranges for various genres. Jun 27, 2019 put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. Put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. Use these numbers as a baseline for your writing goals. Yes, having a book that is overly short or overly long for its genre will incrementally decrease your odds of finding traditional publication.
Average nonfiction word counts biographies and memoirs. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. How long does your future publisher want your novel to be. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Books in this genre are also often gag gifts or are meant to be facetious. A nonfiction book attractive to publishers of bestsellers starts at around 75,000 words. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts. 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. So should i stay with this word count, or try to bring the word count down. Traditionally published mysteries, like the books of sara paretsky, louise penny, laurie r. Jul 24, 2009 my upperlevel ya novel is 211 pages, 61,078 words, tnr 12 pt. 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 pages.
My own past research on ya word count turned up 5080,000 as an average guideline. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. I just popped into my office and pulled a few books off the shelf. Word count varied from 5,000 words to 40,000 words, with an average mean of 17,200 and a median word count of 8,500.
And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is. Everything you need to know about word count and book length for. Word count guidelines by genre word counts are generally agreed to be the count provided by ms words word count tool. It seems like ya novels are getting longer and longer nowadays, but maybe my attention span is getting shorter. If there is an average, 60,000 words to 80,000 words are probably the sweet spot. Smashwords gives a precise word count for each and every b. What occurred to me while reading was how the predetermined word counts make it more difficult to query a novel that crosses categories. Its okay, its a disease and well get through it together. A word count that is much lower than the acceptable range alerts the agent or editor that your novel or nonfiction book probably hasnt been adequately developed. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. Larson writes science fiction with a word count around 100k. Mar 30, 2018 word count guidelines by genre word counts are generally agreed to be the count provided by ms words word count tool.
Editor dana isaacson discusses desirable word counts for different genres. In 2011, the average length of a bestselling nonfiction book was 467. I use amazons data feeds to come up with the calculation. Everything you need to know about novel word counts nathan. With these genres, i would say 100,000 115,000 is an excellent range. 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. If you are a household name, you can publish a compendium of your shopping. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. When i started writing three years ago, the mg word count i kept hearing was no more than 30,000 words.
If you have written a nonfiction book and want to know if you are hitting the. A lot of fiction written for women will have an element of romance, but is far more. May 14, 2018 readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. These word counts assume that a novel is more for commercial consumption, and for adults. A word count that is much higher than the average range tells the agent or editor your work probably needs to be tightened. Fits what ive heard that publishers want shorter and shorter books. Word counts for different genres of novels vary, but there are general rules of thumb that. The word counts of some famous novels for comparison. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is the quality of your manuscript. That gives us a rough range of 61,00089,000 words, with about 3 out of 4 queried ya books falling into that range. Ive been researching the word countspages of ya novels to make sure im not under or over.
But before we explore those specific genres, we should look into the general guidelines first. I got it from the scwc blog im attending in february. Novels for adult readers fall between 80,000 and 120,000 words. Most middle grade novels are between 40,000 and 69,000 words long. The acceptance of a more ambitious word count in these two genres is the need to describe whole new worlds and presumably original. Depending on your genre, having too many or too little can not only hurt your book sales, but also cause fewer 5star. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job.
Basically, instead of applying a formula for word count, we apply the final format and see what results. Search for word count totals in books word counters. I agree that it seems like for a debut author, the agent really looks at that word count. 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. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels.
Have you ever checked your books word count, written a few paragraphs, then checked again. Writing middle grade a look at the numbers hannah holt. A books word count does matter and if you get it wrong, this can impact your. New word count guidelines for contemporary fiction and nonfiction. The authors had sold between 10 copies and 2 million copies of their chapter books. Heres an article which breaks down by genre the typical length. Realize it over the maximum word count for erotic, science fictionfantasy genre. King, and lee child run well over 90k, sometimes going as high as 120k. The word count at big five publishers had a slightly narrower range. Similarly, if your book is published and lands in a bookstore, you dont want to turn away.
Readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. The best thing that you can do is look over comparable books and try to judge word count by their size, average wordspage, and illustration content.
Some extremely oldschool agents prefer that you use the formula of 250 words per page double spaced, 12 pt. Word counts for children, mg, ya, and adult books, by genre august 7, 2017 august 3, 2018 sarahnicolas ive been getting a lot of word count questions from pitch wars hopefuls, so i though id write everything out in a post for ease and convenience. However, there are averages and rough word counts expected by publishers. Aug 07, 2017 word counts for children, mg, ya, and adult books, by genre august 7, 2017 august 3, 2018 sarahnicolas ive been getting a lot of word count questions from pitch wars hopefuls, so i though id write everything out in a post for ease and convenience. Some genres like science fiction can be much longer and spend 1,000s of words on worldbuilding. Word count matters more than it should in my opinion. If youve ever read a joke book or a book revolving around a humorous endeavor of some sort, it falls under this book category. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a word count guideline. Most blogs and writer websites had the moreorless the same advice forget the length and the average word count of your novel. Of course, word count wont matter if a story doesnt hook the target audience. Have you ever checked your book s word count, written a few paragraphs, then checked again. 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. None of them fit the industry standard in word count.
Mar 18, 2016 science fiction and fantasy novels break the above word count rules and can be longer how many words are there in a scifi or fantasy novel. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. What is a good way to get the word count of a kindle book. Onethird of the novels that come into the agency are rejected because theyre too long or. As a nonfiction writer myself, i know this is tough. As a general rule of thumb, a novel falls somewhere between word count ranges of 50,000 words and 100,000 words. There are no hardandfast rules when it comes to what word count a novel in a particular genre should be. 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. Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. This is an updated version of a story that was previously published.
This question came in as a reader comment on one of the earlier blog posts. My upperlevel ya novel is 211 pages, 61,078 words, tnr 12 pt. I created this website to help you better gauge your books word count, because the. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Heres our word count guide for 18 different book genres. I created this website to help you better gauge your book s word count, because the. 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. The highest word count was 115,000, the lowest was 47,000, and the average was 75,000. I publish my books first on smashwords and then, after they pass vetting for the smashwords premium catalog, i publish them on amazon as well. 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. The average word count could be anywhere from 70,000 to 120,000 words. Learn the average wordcount for every type of novel, novella, genre, etc. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. The average mean word count was about 53,000 words.
The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. In contrast, word count is finite and usually i can calculate book length with about 99% accuracy in part because also included in any calculation is a count of figures, tables, etc. Writing chapter books a look at the numbers hannah holt. Aug 15, 2019 average word count for this book genre. Aug 05, 2019 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. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. So if you want to write and publish a book successfully, this is vital information to.
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