Average book word count fiction

Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count. Since supernatural books often create entire worlds, they sometimes require more words than realistic novels. If im writing a novel, this gives me 40 chapters and 70,000 words when im done. Ya manuscripts can have a word count anywhere from 55k to 90k.

This is the range you should have in mind once you begin the editing process. None of them fit the industry standard in word count. To many words can work against you and not just because your audience may lose interest. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. Recently i got asked this question, what is the ideal length word count wise for my first book. Search for word count totals in books word counters. When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12yearolds and could maybe be considered tween, using the term upper middle grade is advisable. Word count for novels and childrens books writers digest. Im just saying that some things are more important than word counts.

Every book is different and for any suggested word or page count you see, you are likely to encounter several popular fantasy books that are outside thoughts on fantasy a blog about the worlds, conventions, and curiosities of fantasy fiction. The overall average word count for a young adult or adult book is about 90,000 words. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot. My own past research on ya word count turned up 5080,000 as an average guideline. The best word count for your selfpublished novel self. Most traditionally published novels for adults are about 80,000 words. Mainstream, thriller, horror, romance, suspense, mystery, and literary and you want to adhere to the 3,0005,000 word count range per chapter, then that would probably entail about 16 to 30 chapters. The total page count excluding appendices and index is 204 pages, thus about 93,000 words. It was 333 words which tends to be lower then the average. However, many authors, frustrated with the low price of ebooks, have taken to writing ebooks that are between 40,000 and 50,000.

It seems like ya novels are getting longer and longer nowadays, but maybe my attention span is getting shorter. 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. Generally a 50,000word novel would be the minimum word count. This is a lot harder because its not a specific field im receiving back i have to scrape the results and do some crazy parsing of the data. Another topselling selfpublished genre, science fiction and fantasy books do best with a word count between 80k150k words. That said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally lies between 100,000 and 115,000. 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. In outlining your book in 3 easy steps, editor shawn coyne says, the average novel today is about 90,000 words. Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story.

A plan for your book that includes a word count helps you. I get a lot of questions about word count for urban fiction novels. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. 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 grandfather of modern christian fiction, in his steps by charles m. As a nonfiction writer myself, i know this is tough. Michaels, melisa 2005, focusing on the wrong things, science fiction writers of america, archived from the original on april 17, 2009 an article on the relative importance of various word count methods in fiction publishing. I agree that it seems like for a debut author, the agent really looks at that word count.

Young adult fiction allows for a lot of flexibility in word count. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 to 75,000 words, but this can vary depending upon category. The sweet spot is between 90,000 words and 100,000 words. And as youve probably guessed it is sitting pretty right in between middle grade and adult. A good way to gauge appropriate length is to check out similar books for comparison. 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. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. Depending on your genre, having too many or too little can not only hurt your book sales. Literary agent danielle zigner takes a look at typical novel lengths and what appeals. Each manuscript should be long enough to adequately tell its story.

Calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. For young adult fiction, the word count is once again lower, with the ideal. Once you have a vision for your book small, standard, or wide formatyou can move on to the second step in deciding how many words you should write. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. It contains 38 lines per page, with an average of 12 words per line, thus 456 words per book page. An article on various word count methods in fiction publishing. Again, its essential to remember that these are suggestions. Larson writes science fiction with a word count around 100k.

Heres an article which breaks down by genre the typical length. Novels for adult readers fall between 80,000 and 120,000 words. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. Publishers want to know the overall length of your book. Granted, that might seem like an intimidating number to some but in the. Firsttime and unknown authors should keep their books shorter. The left behind series original books, not including the prequel, 19952007 by tim lahaye and jerry b. Now, they dont offer word count or running time for books, but they do have a search api.

The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages. What occurred to me while reading was how the predetermined word counts make it more difficult to query a novel that crosses categories. This number can vary depending on if youre writing dialogue or how short each. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. A word count guide for 18 book genres, including fiction. 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 books 50% of books have fewer words and 50% of books have more words. Traditionally published mysteries, like the books of sara paretsky, louise penny, laurie r. Publishers are probably more open to this approach, since when you become more established, theres less risk for them with bigger books. Word counts from the nyt best sellers list writers rumpus. However, occasionally very short books are published, such as harry frankfurts on bullshit, at 67 small pages with very wide margins about 110 wdspage. Books in this genre are also often gag gifts or are meant to be.

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. If youre new to selfpublishing on amazon and wondering, just how much should i write for my kindle book. My word count for a memoir and prescriptive nonfiction manuscript comes in at 39,000. Fantasy and science fiction novels are known to be lengthier than other books. 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. The relationships genre is not to be confused with the fiction romance genre. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Obviously, my point is not that you should submit a first book of anywhere near 200,000 words. First time authors should steer clear of writing anything over 80,000 words. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. My upperlevel ya novel is 211 pages, 61,078 words, tnr 12 pt. Middle grade is from 20,000 55,000, depending on the subject matter and age range, and the word count of these books has been trending up in recent years. But, he also mentions that the wizard of oz was 40,000 words. Big, epic stories get anywhere from 120,000 to 200,000 words.

So, the average wordcount for a typical novel is anywhere from 70,000 to 120,000 words. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. By most peoples standards, 40,000 words would be pretty short for a novel. If youve ever read a joke book or a book revolving around a humorous endeavor of some sort, it falls under this book category.

Jenkins started strongly but weakened, along with the plots. 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. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. King, and lee child run well over 90k, sometimes going as high as 120k. We explain two easy methods to estimate your book s page count. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. I just did a word count on maurice sendaks picture book where the wild things are. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages.

Urban fiction publishing requirements urban fiction news. 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. The old man and the sea was about 25 to 30,000 words. October 6, 2010 november 22, 2017 loutreleaven following on from my blog post on which publishers are accepting unsolicited manuscripts for children, i thought id put together something else i had difficulty finding on the web a guide to word. The first alone has sold more than 120 million copies, and the rest have sold at least 65 million each. So if youre writing a series, start small, then increase the word count with each release. All we have to do is use the wp tool that shows word count. 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. I use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. Although, youll notice with the harry potter books the length of each book increases with each release in the series. Id guess that the actual average number of words in a novel was.