Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. Word counts of famous book series harry potter by jk rowling. Since this was the first book, rowling had more time to edit the book and make the writing more concise. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. Today, even after the introduction of what amazon calls version 2. Analyzing chapter lengths in fantasy fiction creativity hacker.
For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. In fact, the majority of printed books are turned into ebooks. Guess how many words are in a novel by gabe habash for pwxyz according to amazon s great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. Each of my books is the length i needed to tell that characters story. Nevertheless, you would be wise to come close to these suggested manuscript lengths.
Find out how long it will take you to read any book by using our book word count search. A young adult novel will run between 20,000 and 40,000 words. Since the paperback is going away, lets look at more realistic lengths for books. With upper middle grade, you can aim for 40,000 55,000 words. If the content is stepbystep and high quality, 15 pages is enough for a 99 cent kindle book or a freebie used for lead generation. But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer, lengths may also vary by subgenre. Jun 27, 2019 a story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. A step up from picture books, these are for kids who have just started reading by themselves.
The final page number effectively, the books grand total will appear in the bottom row, that for your index. Lewis the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, roald dahls charlie and the chocolate factory. This is a lot of information at a glance, so ill distill a few salient observations. If you are an author of a book or know of a books accurate wordcount, contact me. Word count estimates are not guaranteed to be accurate. Everything you need to know about word count and book length for books and novels and. As a general guideline, chapters should be between 3,000 to 5,000 words. 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. Its also too narrow, since a respectable number of queries fall outside that range. I remember reading some westerns in high school and, if i. Im just saying that some things are more important than word counts. If you want to see what size book is selling in your genre, take a look on the shelves. We could print flash cards, see which words occur most, and more.
Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story. That gives us a rough range of 61,00089,000 words, with about 3 out of 4 queried ya books falling into that range. However, below are the word counts a writing group member recently came up with, derived from the number of times the question about story and book lengths was asked by writers, from various articles and conferences, discussions with agents, agent blogs, and those selfhelp books that all writers love. Chapter books will come in at the lower end of the spectrum, while middlegrade. For a long text containing several sentences it will count words in all of them and output the mean number of words per sentence and total number of words. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words.
Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. Search for a book, tell us how fast you read, and start reading. Some will tell you 2,500 words is the average, while others will say that 3,000 to 5,000 word chapters are more likely to be the norm. But i wanted all the words of the bible in a spreadsheet, so i had. Some of these essays can be done in one day and others in one night. Then consider writing a manuscript of similar length. While anything over 40,000 words can fall into the novel category, 50,000 is considered the minimum novel length. Word counts of the most popular books in the world foster grant uk. The book with the least total number of words is sorcerers stones, while the book with the most words is order of the phoenix. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. To obtain the double spaced length, multiply the values in the last column by 2. Somewhere around 20, one author shared a letter from amazon on one of the popular forum for kindle readers and writers, that said, content that is less than 2,500 words is often disappointing to our customers and does not provide an enjoyable reading experience. A statistical analysis of robert jordans the wheel of time. It has fewer words than the other six books, making it the shortest book in the series.
However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers around 50,00070,000 words. Some 6090k ya books get classified as hilo, but i dont think they were specifically written for the category. 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 books50% of books have fewer words and 50% of books have more words. Also, heres another list i may swipe and add in here. In other words no pun intended, tell your story in as many words as necessaryno more, no less. How does your book measure compare to whats succeeding in todays marketplace. Less than 100 pages and it becomes difficult for a printer to print the title of the book on the spine.
Aug 05, 2019 for most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. Analyzing chapter lengths in fantasy fiction creativity. Obviously, my point is not that you should submit a first book of anywhere near 200,000 words. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. Less than 100 pages and it becomes difficult for a printer to. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away.
Weighing in at over 4 million words, the wheel of time is assuredly among the longest fantasy series out there, although reliable data on the matter is elusive. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. Sep 18, 2017 the standard deviation was 14,000 words. In terms of adult mainstream fiction, that length would be considered a novella. Readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. New writers tend to assume that a chapter must be a certain set length in order to maintain the average novel length of around 80,000 95,000 words, but in truth, chapters can be as long or as short as you need them to be.
Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. And no agents or publishers would even look past that number. However, paranormal and ya fantasy books appear to remain largely in the 80120,000 range, with books targeted at children or younger teenagers sometimes dipping to 5070,000. Tolkiens the lord of the rings trilogy has an enormous word count, with the longest clocking in at over 175,000 words. Add screenshots or other graphics and youve got a nicesized ebook.
The hobbit has more unique words and a higher unique word density than both the silmarillion and each volume in the lord of the rings. Mind you that great classic, the little prince, was such a work. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages. How many words are there in the harry potter book series. Only 2 of the 7 harry potter books came in at under 100,000 words sorcerers stones and chamber of secrets which happened to be the first two books in the series. I have 15 books selling in the amazon kindle store of varying lengths. But again as a surprise to me, dune was a close second, averaging just 3,800 words per chapter. Of course, a printed book probably needs to be at least 100125 pages in length. We immediately see that the commonlycited range of 50,00080,000 is about 10,000 words too low. If youre drawn to writing much shorter tales, the ideal is to make them part of a series or to link them in some other way so that you can publish several of them in something vaguely novelsized. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. Calculate the final extent and number of blank pages at the end of the book.
We thought you might find it interesting to also see some more facts and figures about the bibles 66 different books. The length can vary greatly between genres, though. In the first book i tried to write my chapters were about 500 words long. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. No more than 90,000 words seems to be the editors mantra these days. According to our table of data above, there are 609,269 words in the old testament and 179,011 words in the new testament, making a total of 788,280 words. But i wanted all the words of the bible in a spreadsheet, so i had to take it a step further. There are also some subgenres that have slightly different conventions. To do so, get the number of sections by dividing the grand total of pages by 16, then round up to a whole number of sections, multiplying these by 16. If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words at the very. A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel.
When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12yearolds and could maybe be considered tween, using the term upper middle grade is advisable. Words to pages determine page length from words count. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. The number of pages also doesnt help much, as publishers use different typefaces, page sizes, font sizes, etc. However, many authors, frustrated with the low price of ebooks, have taken to writing ebooks that are between 40,000 and 50,000. Most agree that under 1,000 words would be rather short and that over 5,000 might be rather too long.
I was scared that agents would reject my book simply because i had got the length wrong. Eye of the world was one of the more normally distributed book in terms of chapter wordcount, which essentially means it had a mostcommon chapter length and a comparable number of chapters that were longer or shorter the dragon reborn was rightskewed, which means there was a heavy. Anything over 110,000 words is considered too long for a fiction novel. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. Wikipedia suggests it is some 1 million words longer than the malazan book of the fallen, its chief competition for the honor omitting shared universe tales like those of mercedes.
That said, each manuscript should be long enough to adequately tell its story or. Apr 23, 2018 there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to word counts, and different sources are going to tell you different things. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. This was an intersting bit of information i kinda wish it was 30 words longer, though.
The first book, harry potter and the sorcerers stone, has 76,944 words. One thing to keep in mind with how many pages is words is that it depends on the text, its size, and the spacing youre using. This number was significantly different from the average we had seen for the estimated print length that had been given in the product details of each books amazon sales page. I have never, nor will i ever, force a book to be longer just for the sake of word count. Jul 23, 2012 in other words no pun intended, tell your story in as many words as necessaryno more, no less. The collection as a whole posted an average chapter length of 6,100 words. Sep 20, 2009 the final page number effectively, the books grand total will appear in the bottom row, that for your index. That said, if your book is around 40,000 words, youre in good company. Reading length is a participant in the amazon services llc associates program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to. Since just comparing the number of unique words in a book does not take its length into account i decided to calculate the percentage of unique words of the whole text.
Novels intended for the adult market will be longer than those targeted at children and young adults. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. Because yes, different types of books require different book lengths. I think the fewest words i have in a book is about 15,000. If the average length is 300 pages, youre looking at a 75,000 word manuscript approximately. Using this exercise, you should end up with a good idea of book length expectations for a novel like yours. There are plenty of books that purposefully play with the word counts of their chapters. Why does the length of a typical novel fall in the 80. Jan 08, 2018 you can see there is a lot of variation in word length, especially in epic high fantasy, where books can stretch beyond 200,000 words or sink as low as 50,000. But overall, heres my own rough stab at word counts by genre. Mar 20, 2020 an ebook could be 3,000 words or as long as a fulllength book. Now, i will say that yeah, a chapter thats 10,000 words for any category of childrens book is probably crazy. 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. You can see there is a lot of variation in word length, especially in epic high fantasy, where books can stretch beyond 200,000 words or sink as low as 50,000.
The title with the shortest chapters, on average, was whirlwind in the thorn tree, averaging just 2,900 words each. R which counts the number of words per sentence in a given text string. May 14, 2018 readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. The graphic looks at the length of some famous novels, poems, and plays from literary history. These are books that resemble young adult in matter and storytelling. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. For a printed book, 37,000 words is definitely on the short side less than 150 pages so publishers may not be interested as pricing will be low and volumes needing to be correspondingly high. Yeah sure, if pressed, i could come up with some harder numbers, but i dont like to do that because i believe that every book sort of has its own style. Pbs go from image only board books all the way up to full stories with significant illustrations. An ebook could be 3,000 words or as long as a fulllength book.
As with everything else when it comes to writing a book, these are only guidelinesnot rules. At an average reading rate of 125 words per minute, thats about 145 hours of reading. Martins a song of ice and fire series, is the lengthiest of the five currently released. Middlegrade novels are generally 20,000 to 55,000 words. In most cases, industry standard preferred length is 250 words per page. By most peoples standards, 40,000 words would be pretty short for a novel. May 29, 2014 that left me with 66 logos word lists, each giving me every originallanguage word in a given book of the bible. Jul 18, 20 the longest average chapter lengths were lord of the rings 7,500, prince of nothing 8,700, and the beefiest chapters were found in the black company, with an average chapter length of 11,300 words. May 11, 2009 for a printed book, 37,000 words is definitely on the short side less than 150 pages so publishers may not be interested as pricing will be low and volumes needing to be correspondingly high. That left me with 66 logos word lists, each giving me every originallanguage word in a given book of the bible. Only 2 of the 7 harry potter books came in at under 100,000 words sorcerers stones and chamber of secrets which happened to be the first two books in.