Typical nonfiction book word count

Sep 06, 2016 some of the other answers are idiosyncratic. Short stories are often defined as any story under 7,500 words. Depending on your genre, having too many or too little can not only hurt your book sales, but also cause fewer 5star. As with everything else when it comes to writing a book, these are only guidelinesnot rules. Jan 08, 2018 calculate book page count using your word count.

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. In 2015, the drop resumed as the average fell to 345. Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story. The post lists a dizzying number of genres and a recommended word count range for each. In itself, no measure is perfect but personally i find word count the most useful.

Elizabeth said, for nonfiction books, it depends on the kind of book. How many words should be in an adult nonfiction book. Jul 24, 2009 a 95,000 word book even by page count is a different story than a 70,000 word book. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing stack. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. Nonfiction books also vary tremendously in word count. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Oct 18, 2017 therefore, the word count of a novel is crucial if you want your book to be fit for publication. May 14, 2018 literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. Overwriting drags down a narrative, turns off prospective agentspublishersreaders, and can cause professional services to become prohibitively expensive. Amazon estimates a page count in an ebook to be around 187 words. You would be wise to come close to these suggested. By 2017, however, that number has dropped to 273 pages.

Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. Aug 05, 2019 for most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. Failing to mention the word count, or committing the faux pas of stating the page count instead, will also see a quick rejection. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. 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. Contrast that with the other novel proposal i received this week with a word count of 540,000 words. This reduction will be very small, like maybe 12 lines less per page, and 510 pages less for the book. Can be publisher specific, ranging from 3,000 to absolute max 5,000. A word count that is much higher than the average range tells the agent or editor your work probably needs to be tightened. Apr 07, 2014 generally speaking, traditional publishers expect completed nonfiction book manuscripts to be between 50,000 to 75,000 words. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 to 75,000 words, but this can vary depending upon category. A nonfiction book attractive to publishers of bestsellers starts at around 75,000 words. However, the drop in the overall average length of bestsellers over the last 7 years points to a marked. For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you 41,212.

Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. As always, be sure to keep it interesting so you can justify the word length. The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. So 50,000 words is the minimum for a nonfiction book. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. And man, people love to point out exceptionsand they always will. 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. I heard 10,000 words can be accepted as an e book at a short length at least for nonfiction. 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. Write as much as it takes to tell the story, and no more. The binding, font and paper size establish how many pages a published book will be. Think of it like a sculpture, such as the thinker by auguste rodin.

For example, if an author has to write a minimum or maximum amount of words for an article, essay, report, story, book, paper, you name it. Of course, when youre writing the first draft of your story, you want to just get your words out on paper. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is the quality of your manuscript. Your chapter length has to work well with the overall word count of the book short chapters create an even distribution of both content and action.

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 nonfiction writer myself, i know this is tough. My own past research on ya word count turned up 5080,000 as an average guideline. Im not sure if im pushing the word count over, been trying cut back the word count. And a typical howto nonfiction book might need between 7 and 12. For nonfiction, the people who say a book should be however long it needs to. Search for word count totals in books word counters. These word counts are my personal references they are not official, and do not include back matter, which is bonus material for the reader or information geared for parents, teachers, or older readers. A recommended wordcount might be 15002000 words but, more. However, book length varies widely between genres, among authors, and based on the content of the book. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. The list was revised in september 2010 in consultation with a number of us fiction editors, but. Wordcounter will help to make sure its word count reaches a specific requirement or stays within a certain limit.

May 07, 2018 a typical nonfiction book ranges between 55,000 and 80,000 words. 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. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Rowlings recordbreaking series began with two titles on the high end of that spectrum and finished with five that left the guidelines in the dust. 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.

Average word count ranges from 70,000 to 100,000 words, although biographies of major celebrities or public figures can support a higher number. During the introductory month of the new system, the conversion of kenpc into the actual number of words in the book actual word count showed significant differences from one book to the other. What occurred to me while reading was how the predetermined word counts make it more difficult to query a novel that crosses categories. 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. If youre a new author, id recommend staying on the shorter side, perhaps around the 75,000 word mark.

Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000. The number of characters, the number of subplots, the pacing are all affected by word count. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. As a result, a 100k manuscript can size up very differently on a shelf. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about. If yes, then most publishers still work on specific word count lengths for books so youll probably be aiming for around 60,00080,000 words for nonfiction. Sketch out your outline, make sure your structure works, and then start coming up with more clever titles for the chapters and parts, if you use those.

Some markets dont recognize the novelette as a separate. Generally speaking, traditional publishers expect completed nonfiction book manuscripts to be between 50,000 to 75,000 words. In 2016s list, ron chernows 816page alexander hamilton managed to crack the top spot. 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. My upperlevel ya novel is 211 pages, 61,078 words, tnr 12 pt. Technically, in fiction, most publishers and awards consider anything over 40,000 words to be a novel, but many publishers wont look at anything under 60,000. Take a typical 250 word per page, 15 pages of good content contains around 3,750 words. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. Realize it over the maximum word count for erotic, science fictionfantasy genre. What is the ideal word count for a nonfiction book in the. Page count is determined by the publisher, not the writer. For nonfiction books, word count guidelines are more flexible, sometimes even double the word counts listed here. Line count varies depending on page size, font size, etc.

We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts. When i started writing three years ago, the mg word count i kept hearing was no more than 30,000 words. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. Jun 03, 2009 as far as length, popular memoirs range quite a bit from about 60,000 words to 120,000 or more. The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916. A good way to gauge appropriate length is to check out similar books for comparison. This isnt to say that long books are no longer succeeding. When talking about book length, its common to talk about word count rather than page count. Onethird of the novels that come into the agency are rejected because theyre too long or.

It should be enough to communicate your message effectively. A single novel can be longer, but once the length is above 110,000 words publishers may look at cutting it back, unless it is a particular kind of book books over the 110k word count are usually considered epics. Perhaps he could have sculpted the feet and those muscular legs, and shown somebody his work to see if they wanted to buy it. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Jan 11, 2011 authors often ask me about average word lengths for their manuscripts. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. I advise authors to ignore word counts when writing. The actual word count for the hunger games is 99,750 and my utility calculates 94,743 words. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. You want 50,000 to 85,000 words for a fulllength selfhelp book, half that for a selfpublished ebook. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words.

You wont get exact, but youre wondering whether 35k is reasonable, so you dont need exact. The best thing that you can do is look over comparable books and try to judge word count by their size, average words page, and illustration content. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 words. Use these numbers as a baseline for your writing goals. The most important thing here is to realize that there are always exceptions to these rules. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. Jun 07, 2017 when talking about book length, its common to talk about word count rather than page count. That number actually lines up pretty well with the data we have on this, but again, that number should neither be a goal, nor a constraint. And dont forget to calculate what your word count will be. But depending on the ereading device and the font size setting, it varies significantly between a phone, a tablet, or a kindle. 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. I guess 50,000 is a short novel and some early novels before goes as low as 40,000 which can be considered to be a novella. The popular book the noticer 2009 by andy andrews barely breaks the novel barrier at 40,454 words without the readers guide that was added to pad the book.

But chapter word count is something that you want to keep in. Average nonfiction word counts biographies and memoirs. In all cases, you can find an author who has successfully pushed the envelope one way or another. While theres no reliable statistic, heres an interesting post on word count from the blog of former agent colleen lindsay. The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000 word range. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Sharp objects has a word count of 80,565 and my utility calculates it at 80,7. The average adult novel runs approximately 100,000 words while those in other categories run 80120,000 words. For the larger, 6 x 9 trim size, would be about 300 words per page. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. Microfiction and flash fiction are the tweets of the fiction world. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. Many, yes, but there are exceptions due to the layout and font size of a particular book. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a word count guideline.

I agree that it seems like for a debut author, the agent really looks at that word count. I do not think my target audience will want to read much more. It seems like ya novels are getting longer and longer nowadays, but maybe my attention span is getting shorter. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors.

Another recommendation by tom corsonknowles from tck publishing. Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word. I asked agents elizabeth pomada and michael larsen of larsen pomada literary agency to add their thoughts to the subject. In 2017, the downward trend has continued, with an average book length of 273 pages. Most traditional publishers will place restrictions on an author and require that the manuscript not exceed a specified word count, unless special concessions are made. The grandfather of modern christian fiction, in his steps by charles m. Count up the total number of words on 10 random full lines from different places and divide by 10 to get the average wordsper. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. Personally, i recommend at least 10,000 words for nonfiction, unless you can do it justice in less. Short and punchy books are 40,000 to 60,000 words, but many nonfiction books are lengthy. Jul 23, 2012 my word count for a memoir and prescriptive nonfiction manuscript comes in at 39,000 i truly do not feel my story should be longer because. If your manuscript is on the short side, make this clear when pitching to a publisher. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. There are plenty of books that purposefully play with the word counts of their chapters.

Mar 17, 2010 over time, the word count diminished and volume 8 the mark contained only 85,341 words, and the last volume, number 16 kingdom come, dwindled to 77,776 words. The di vinci code 2003 by dan brown is 8,380 words christian book word count. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. These books are generally heftier in general, so for a 150page book you can target 45,000 words and 60,000 words for a 200page book. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to. The important thing is that your length fits your book. If a page is 500 words on an ipad, and 250 words on a kindle, it might be only 120 words on a phone. So should i stay with this word count, or try to bring the word count down. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. Like novels, these books fall into the 70,000 to 120,000 word range. A memoir is a work of art much more than the typical nonfiction book.

A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words. In the meantime, overwriting to the point that your draft exceeds typical word count ranges is a common issue and those widelyaccepted ranges arent completely arbitrary. According to chuck sambuchino see below for word count. If youd like some guidelines, you can assume that the average nonfiction book is 50k words, and that they have 12 chapters, so around 4k words would be an average chapter length. Of course, rules are made to be broken, especially in literature. 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. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Your best bet is to figure out what books yours is comparable to, then sit down and count the words on 23 typical pages. In 2011, the average length of a bestselling nonfiction book was 467 pages, but that dropped to 273 pages in 2017. There are a few book word count guidelines for each genre, but these arent hard and fast rules.