Doing 50,000 words in 30 days a nanowrimo participant chronicles the pluses and minuses in 750 words. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. You dont want to overwrite and be forced to use a teeny font. At a writers conference i recently attended, publishing. Now, if youre using an unconventional formatting or margins you could see different results, however, with standard word processor defaults and a 12 point arial or times new roman font your output should be very similar. Our experience is that, on average, narrative english text in the financiallegal field has 7. So youre looking at around 20 pages anyway, give or take 5. You 50,000 word manuscript may be half the page length of another authors 50,000 word manuscript.
I would expect typical text whatever that is set in 12 point times new roman to contain approximately 600 words 4000 characters per page. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Find a book thats formatted in the way you imagine your book as being, and count the number of words on a typical page. Some pubs will look at manuscripts from 70,000 to 110,000 words, rarely outside of that. Due to wide variation between definitions, it is always a good idea to put a word count at the bottom of your product description when selling an unusuallength book. The overview below provides an indication of the number of pages required based on font. That said, if your book is around 40,000 words, youre in good company.
As you can see, a smaller trim size will produce more pages for the same word count, and a larger trim size will produce less. Knowing how many words in a novel is the first step toward writing a book. You can use comparable, successful books as models to determine the length. And, though on the shorter side, its definitely long enough to be considered a novel. For one reason or another, an agent and editor might feel this book length isnt ideal for a particular project. Pauls article shows you a formula to calculate finished time.
The average adult novel runs approximately 100,000 words while those in other categories run 80120,000 words. One of my biggest problems as a publisher is having authors deliver more than was agreed to. That said, youll probably get a number somewhere between 250 and 350, so your story would come out at between 85 and 120 pages. Just to give you context, steve woodmore a british electronics salesman and comedian once shattered the world record in the guinness book of world records for fastest speech. Every category will have an average length, including childrens books, young adult, business books, etc. At the current stage im at in the process, i have no idea how many words the book will end up.
Words per page is a free online words to pages calculator which converts the numbers of words you write into pages and allows you to change margins, font size and fonts. 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. For single spaced pages, 62 and a half pages would be about 50,000 words. Meaning most of us speak at 159 words per minute at best. Lewis the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, roald dahls charlie and the chocolate factory. 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 for the mathimpaired, that means you multiply the number of. Historical romances at harlequin will run to 75,000 words, but everywhere else theyre longer. Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. Your debut novel is 20,000 words long how not to self. Childrens books, however, are allowed a lower word count than comparable books for adults. There is a trend, however, for business books to be shorter. If there are script additions or script changes after a voice actor records a script, revision fees apply within 30. Its too much hassle and timeconsuming time you couldve spent refining and perfecting your book content. Publishers want to know the overall length of your book. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. This is useful only as a writers alternate way of assessing the length of a manuscript, nothing more.
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. Professional writers tend not use the word page when describing length. Using amazons number of words as a guide, 5,000 words would equal 26. Technically, the screenplay was written by nathan parker based on a story by drake doremus, who is the films director. Yet what equals is based on will most likely take fans by total surprise. 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. As a publisher who has laid out dozens of books for printinga 50000 word. In addition, digital publishing is making novels and novelettes of any length more. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. He can articulate 637 words per minute, which is touted as four times as fast as the average human. The shortest that routinely gets contracted is the category romance, which runs about 55,000 words. An ebook with 15 pages amounts to only around 3000 words. Here is a partial list of wellknown novels that contain roughly 50,000.
Most massmarket paperbacks are a good 80,000 words. Here is a partial list of wellknown novels that contain roughly 50,000 words, which in turn is roughly 175 pages, and are thus comparable to the average size of a nanowrimo winners novel see also list of published authors who write quickly for published authors who consistently write at the nanowrimo pace or faster the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy by douglas adams 46,333 words. Even the complexity of the words you use affects how many words are on a page. Do keep in mind that 50k words is way too short to qualify as novellength for. And now were seeing some publishers produce book that run from 100,000 to 120,000 words. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. For instance, audible uses an average rate of speed of 155 words a minute, or 9300 words per finished hour. Jobs over 750 words attract 50% rerecord fees if no live direction is given.
Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. I think that a typical paperback novel usually has somewhere between 300500 words per page. Equals is based on a story thatll take fans by surprise. No more than 90,000 words seems to be the editors mantra these days. A double spaced page has about 400 words, so 50,000 words would be about 125 pages. Equivalent of characters including spaces in words. Because while formatting can drastically change the page number, wordcount is a much better standard to run by. Most editors wouldnt recommend going over 80,000, as it will inspire bad taste among readers. Its like all those catbreeders who are selectively breeding the persians nose right out of existence, just because a pushedin face is desirable for the breed.
Yes, exceptions for a first novel can be found, but writers who depend upon being the exception are. Today, were going to talk about why probably nanowrimos goal is 50,000 words. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. There are too many factors that affect the number of words on a page for a meaningful answer.
This trim size is good for only 200 to 250 words per printed book page. Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. Most standalone novels run between 80,000 and 95,000 words. Word count assuming your manuscript is in courier 12 with 1inch margins in a manuscript will come out to about 250 words per page. Estimate your page count book designer linda parke. The answer is one page single spaced or two pages double spaced.
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. Lines of 50 or 55 characters are very much standard here in germany. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. Average speed speaker 125 wpm slow speaker 90 wpm fast speaker 150 wpm the following table below provides an indication of the minutes for a. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. As basic info, you need to know the word count, not the page count, of the book you would narrate. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. Novels for adult readers fall between 80,000 and 120,000 words. Please add any additional comments or explanation optional.
The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. In two minutes, i found ebooks ranging from 10 to 950 pages. The typical books wordsperpage count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. Jobs of less than 750 words allow for 1 initial record, then 2 full rerecords for changes in tone and style.
Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. A 40,000 to 80,000word memoir is around 150265 pages, a standard booklength for the genre. A novel of 50,000 would be the absolute minimum for some genres and, unless you are ken follett or some other established author, you should view 100,000 as the maximum. Word count to page count free calculator for students and writers this is a tool to estimate how many pages long your paper will be, depending on word count and font name. You can use this tool when you write and also when you order from an academic writing website. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers around 50,00070,000 words. So a 400 page manuscript would be about 240,000 words.
Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. The idea is the thinner the book, the more copies will fit on a rack70 000 words means theres room for seven books. Now, depending on how youve setup your document your page count may vary slightly, but with arial or times new roman 12 point font and conventional margins you should see similar results. This is around 5060,000 words although there are some who would say it should be more and a few that it should be less. However sometimes, like today, the reverse happens. By most peoples standards, 40,000 words would be pretty short for a novel. However, this rule can be bent for the following reasons. This is about the length readers want for general nonfiction, and it. There were rumors in 20 that amazon had set a minimum word. All we have to do is use the wp tool that shows word count. 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.
In such cases, depending on whats desired, it might not be too difficult for a writer to pivot up to 100,000 words, or down to 80,000. If you are using word to create your manuscript, then you can use word count to find its length and work from there. Timepressed business owners would often rather choose a book they can read on a long flight, than spend hours reading in their own time. Use the calculator below to convert your words to minutes. Before our book page count calculator, you had to dig around through multiple sources to figure out how many words per page for your exact font size and then do the math. A novel of 50,000 would be the absolute minimum for some genres and, unless you are ken. No matter how much you adjust the other variables, if the ms is only 50,000 words in length instead of 95,000, then you have a problem if the book was announced as being 288 pages in length but the most it can be stretched to is 160 pages. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. 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. Meanwhile picking the book next to it on the shelf, clash of the sky galleons has roughly 250 words a page, which would bring your total up to around 160 pages. All thats left is editing, proofing, formatting, adding graphics, etc. Although, it can vary quite a lot depending on page font size etc. When you query a publisher, its customary to include your novels estimated word count.