There are vastly different numbers for mass market paperback novels, tradepaperback original novels or trade nonfiction, hardback original trade books, and for nontrade titles in any of a. Nonfiction requires more thinking time from your reader, so you need to consider the role of your book. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. For books printed on offset presses, total pages must be multiples of 8, 16, or 32, e.
These books are generally heftier in general, so for a 150 page book you can target 45,000 words and 60,000 words for a 200 page book. Do this for several books in your niche to get a targeted range. Regardless of genre, there is no hard and fast rule about how many pages or words each chapter should contain or how many chapters should be in a book. Page numbering tips for nonfiction authors birds of a.
Long book length at the other end of the spectrum a book of 80,000 to 100,000 words has significant heft, 320400 pages. If youre concerned about the final page count for your book, you should know that the average 6. Now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic. Most influential books under 100 pages to qualify for this list each book edition must have fewer than 100 pages, according to goodreads data. Estimate your page count book designer linda parke. Any selfhelp or motivational nonfiction book should be between 30,000 and 70,000 words. Your chapter structure needs to be in proportion to the overall length of the book. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. The length can vary greatly between genres, though. Less than 70,000 unless fantasy scifi supernatural, which can be longer, max 90,000. Writers digest recommends 80,000 to 89,999 words as a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, womens, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror.
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. One of the questions that new writers always ask is how long should my nonfiction book be. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words. This means your book will be between 100 and 230 pages in total. Thats approximately 300 pages of doublespaced type. 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. Certain groups read more, or less, than the country as a whole. Your completed table of contents will then become the roadmap for writing your book. 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. Basic book designnumber of pages wikibooks, open books. As an interesting side note, amazons text stats show that the average length of all books on amazon is about 64,000 words. Ive also seen some that are quite longas long as a fulllength book.
Samplefirst page of chapter outline for a nonfiction book. With longer books, you can get a rough count by adding up the number of words on an average page and multiplying by the total number of pages. Add these informational text blank book pages to your writing center for students to use when writing nonfiction. Id guesstimate that nonfiction books generally yes, this is very rough run perhaps 150450 pages, and at about 350 wdpage that works out to something like 50150k words. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. The average number of books each person read over the course of a year was 12but that number is inflated by the most avid readers. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words. I think this has led some authors to try to find ways to. Learn how to estimate your page count and how long your book should. However, there are some general guidelines in this article that may help you determine the page count and chapter length needed for your book. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid.
The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000word range. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing stack. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Specifically, an accessible nonfiction book might be anything between about 30,000 words and 50,000 words. This set of informational text blank book pages is designed for your nonfiction focus in writing workshop. Simply divide the total word count from your word document by the number of words per page. Indeed, most traditional publishers limit nonfiction authors to 80,000 words for standard 6 x 9 books, between 240 and 280 pages. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. Of course, theres plenty of variation among demographics. A 100 page book would be, then, about 25,000 words. Less than 100 pages and it becomes difficult for a printer to print the title of the book on the spine.
Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. A you should be aware that the majority of readers are actually adults. I remember reading some westerns in high school and, if i. Mysteries and young adult books run between 40,000 and 80,000 words. So lets say you want your book to match your competitors at 240 pages. After two years of careful consideration, robert mccrum has concluded his selection of the 100 greatest nonfiction books of all time. On average there are 233 words per page for a nonfiction book and 280 words per page for a fiction book on amazon. But over the last 5 years, the number of pages has regressed to the point where only 200400 pages is now considered the upper limit of the book publishing spectrum. 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. And, keeping your chapters short creates a good balance between content and action, and fits with this model of short actionable content. In outlining your book in 3 easy steps, editor shawn coyne says, the average novel today is about 90,000 words.
In fact, many printed books are turned into ebooks. In my opinion, if your nonfiction book is fewer than about 30,000 words 120 pages, it does not feel substantial enough to be real book. For the larger, 6 x 9 trim size, would be about 300 words per page. Ask your printer if you save money by using a multiple of 32. Generally speaking, traditional publishers expect completed nonfiction book manuscripts to be between 50,000 to 75,000 words. January 15, 2019 leave a comment on page numbering tips for nonfiction authors how to number your nonfiction book many of the internal layout, heading and numbering rules selfpublishers follow are actually based on old standards from the traditional publishing world, but they still hold true today. For a typical novel or narrative nonfiction book of about 200 pages, i would start off with an outside margin of.
There are no hardandfast rules for the number of pages in a book. The most frequently reported number was 4 books per year. Your telephone number your email address 8 11 singleline spaces 9 title all caps, bold, centered by centered your name or pen name upper and lower case centered samplefirst page of a nonfiction book, cover, or title sheetformat use 12 pt. In the publishing industry, 250 words is considered a printed page of text. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages.
What is the average number of pages in a book of fiction. The average sales per title are utterly without meaning. Flick through to see if there are lots of short chapters creating lots of half. He wrote, the number of e book singles any e book between 5,000 and 30,000 words in length published in the third quarter increased a whopping 27 percent compared to the second quarter of 20. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages.
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. For documents printed on laser printers including xerox docutech printers, any number of pages is possible. This format generally averages about 300 words per page, thus about 30,000 words per 100 pages. Of course, a printed book probably needs to be at least 100125 pages in length. A books have a teenage protagonist, but if you want to write y. As previously discussed, there are different requirements for both fiction and nonfiction genres. In 2015, the drop resumed as the average fell to 345. Many people read in spurts, at lunch time, or on the subway. Amazons most read charts rank titles by the average. In addition, the 32 pages can all be printed on a single sheet of paper, making it costeffective. How to set the retail price for your nonfiction book. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. That means your manuscript must be at least 3540,000 words long. In this article im going to attempt to answer that question.
Amazons most sold charts rank books according to the number of copies sold and preordered through, amazon books stores, and books read through digital subscription programs once a customer has read a certain percentage roughly the length of a free reading sample. How to set the retail price of your book mill city press. Just remember, with so much diversity in nonfiction, you have even less of a reason to get hung up on length. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. That means 75,000 words equals 300 pages, which is just about perfect for a first novel. When talking about book length, its common to talk about word count rather than page count. If your manuscript is on the short side, make this clear when pitching to a publisher. Calculate the number of pages using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book. My intention is for us to vote on the widespread influence of the books, not whether we liked them. Now that weve covered how many words are in a novel, its time to break it down even further by finding out the ideal number of chapters in a novel and how many words are used in a typical chapter depending on the writing genre, word count in book chapters can vary considerably. Pages by paperback uses an industry standard formula for english language publishing of taking the average number of words per page and multiplying it by the average number of characters per word five including a space, for six total, the product of which is then used to divide against the total character count of the project.