This is not a post for the writers who have trouble writing books that arent long enough. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. Word count is the devil you have to love, or at the very least, respect. Odd thomas 108,9 the face of fear 60,8 the bad place 146,472. Recently i came across an interview question to create a algorithm in any language which should do the following. In this section we will see how to use the computer to count the words in a text in a. Theyre very short in terms of manuscript length 1,500 words max but are broken up into either chapters or vignettes that will give the reader the feeling of reading a book with real chapters in it. Word count is a direct way to measure the length of a novel in a manner unaffected by variations of format and page size. After including multiple movie adaptations of the same movie and excluding movies where i couldnt find any data on book length as measured by word count, i came up with a dataset of 59 movie adaptations of best selling books. If all you do is talk about wanting to write a book, then you are an aspiring writer. Go play cricket or bake a souffle or save the whales. The original idea behind tell is to put in order and this has led in two main directions 1. I also include word counts from some best sellers in. I counted at least 28 errors on one magnified page spelling, grammatical.
With fun, lighthearted, simple middle grade youll want to stay around the 20k30k word count range. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. Lets take a quick tour of copy fitting, casting off and related issues here. Stephen king goes on to say that he has never had a book which didnt benefit from editing out about 10%. Word counts of famous book series harry potter by jk rowling. For full titles, authors and descriptions of these books, see whats on my travel memoir bookshelf. Sharp objects has a word count of 80,565 and my utility calculates it at 80,7. Make a count for each reoccuring word in that content. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. I dont know what i can say to add to what has already been said.
If your goal is 100,000 words then youre going to be looking at 400 standard manuscript pages. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Writing stack exchange is a question and answer site for the craft of professional writing, including fiction, nonfiction, technical, scholarly, and commercial writing. This question came in as a reader comment on one of the earlier blog posts. It is a way an author can estimate word count, but its just as easy these days to use the word count function on your average word processing program to get a pretty accurate count. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures. Search for word count totals in books word counters.
Free online pdf word countfree word counter tool online to count the number of words in pdf files and documentsthe counter can includeexclude numbers years, dollar amounts. Depending on how engrossing the story is i would prefer to err on the shorter side, say 50,00080,000. Lets begin by finding out the length of a text from start to finish, in terms of the words and. Smashwords gives a precise word count for each and every b.
Im leaving this in the list to show that word count isnt offered for every book. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Word count of popular fantasy and science fiction series. That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. When combined, the total harry potter word count is over a million words. Author eve tells me her book came in at 95,000 words. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. How to calculate book length in an earlier post i discussed broad issues relating to word count and book length but didnt actually explain how the length of a book is calculated. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Heres a quick word count guide for adult fiction, adult sff, young adult contemporary, young adult sff, and middle grade.
The related words tale and talk also express this meaning 2. This is a true statement if your goal is to be published through traditional methods someday. While some need the length and those tend to stand out most simply need more revision and tightening. Word count, with a little help from amazon alexis grant. This is not a post for writers who say theyre going to write a short story and actually end up writing a short story. Write as much as it takes to tell the story, and no more.
The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916. Its an approximation because the manuscript you wrote is your best effort. Most leaders dont even know the game they are in simon sinek at live2lead 2016 duration. A novelist of my acquaintance insists that the only way to estimate the number of words in a book is to multiply the number of pages by 250. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. At an average reading rate of 125 words per minute, thats about 145 hours of reading. 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. If youre a new author, id recommend staying on the shorter side, perhaps around the 75,000 word mark. I built one logos word list like this for every single book of the bible. Other issues such as margin space and paragraph length will likely result in some variation from the calculations given. Put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. Thus the bigger question isnt the word count, but what the final word count will be after cutting 10% of your novel. The other basic sense is to count or add up, as in nine all told nine in total or teller literally someone who counts money.
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. That being said, it should provide a more accurate indication of the number of pages a specific word count will be and the number of words per page you. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Nope, this is a post for writers who set out to write a nice little 100,000word noveland find themselves at the finish line with a 200,000word behemoth on their hands. This question about average word count was on my mind as well, when i started writing my book. How to increase your novels word count noveldoctor. If no word of length length was encountered, we allocate that slot and we set that to zero. Anything above 70k but less than 115k science fiction and fantasy tend to run up around 100k115k words. As you can see, established authors get much more flexibility when it comes to the length of their book. These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and.
Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and. Opt already knows how many words opt has in the ms. The important thing is that your length fits your book. The daily word counts of 19 famous writers word counter blog. Counting chickens a few words about word counts at hope vestergaards site. The saga plenty of characters and a complex, epic story told over many generations think roots. As far as length, popular memoirs range quite a bit from about 60,000 words to 120,000 or more. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. Word count for the book to kill a mockingbird word counters. I publish my books first on smashwords and then, after they pass vetting for the smashwords premium catalog, i publish them on amazon as well. Its word count will changeat least slightly, and maybe radicallybefore it appears in book form. Estimate your page count book designer linda parke. He attempts to locate the likeliest origin of the african words passed down by kunta.
For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. The actual word count for harry potter and the sorcerers stone is 78,792 and my utility calculates 77,876. The first book in each series below was the authors first. That left me with 66 logos word lists, each giving me every originallanguage word in a given book of the bible. For example, atonement has a word count of 123,378 and my utility comes up with 110,765 words. I dont know if the question is meant as a mentalstatistical exorcise. Coyne uses the nanowrimo wordcount length of 50,000 words for his examples, calling 50,000 words a good foundation to build upon. Browse other questions tagged wordcount booklength or ask your own question. For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you.
Calculate book page count using word count for book design. Alex haley author of the book and central character for last 30 pages. Word count for novels and childrens books at the guide to literary agents blog. Famous book series and novel word counts count words and. That said, this figure differs from book to book and organization to. Book length word count science fiction and fantasy world. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Longer, more complex stories, which contain a handful of main characters and peripheral characters, tend to run at about 60,000 to 95,000 words. 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.
Most blogs and writer websites had the moreorless the same advice forget the length and the average word count of your novel. Secondly, writers dont have to fit their word count into generic set amounts. There may be times when someone doesnt want to pick up a long book, but on the whole i dont think most readers much notice word count. If you are writing a standard length novel, aim for 80,000 to 95,000 words. The saga of an american family is a 1976 novel written by alex haley. Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the great gatsby, and slaughterhousefive are between 4050,000 words. Early readers are the earliest chapter stories that a kid can get.
Pdf word count free online pdf word count tool to count. Many, yes, but there are exceptions due to the layout and font size of a particular book. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. Its roots go back to the early days of the cold war, when the promise of. What is a good way to get the word count of a kindle book. The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy southern town and the crisis of. In standard manuscript format, your word count becomes about 250 words per page which makes 350 pages about 87,500 words. Your target audience for these is kids ages 4 to 8. And as an author, i think in word counts, not in 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. After comparing the views of other consultants and lecturers, and many books on writing, we have decided to offer a chart of accepted lengths. If youre not a big fan of math, then you can eliminate the guess work by using standard manuscript format. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. My first two books, winter tide and deep roots, are weird fantasy that starts by taking lovecrafts monsters deep ones, ghouls, jewish people from new york, etc. 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. Length of a book is typically associated with its sizespecifically page countleading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read. Those of you who dont care about traditional publishing can leave the room now. At the end of the function, youll find that lengths will contain a map of word length number of words of that length. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book.
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