Short book word count

A good, short literary novel might be 60,000 words. Since opinions vary greatly, i did some research to verify the numbers in my head. Right now im obsessed with a novelweb serial called, worm. Word counter is an easy to use online tool for counting words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and pages in real time, along with spelling and grammar checking. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. 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. A books word count does matter and if you get it wrong, this can. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. I heard 10,000 words can be accepted as an e book at a short length at least for nonfiction. Aug 05, 2019 for that matter, how long should any book be. Word count for book series the first book in each series below was the authors first. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words.

Below are approximate word counts for kings published books. 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. Mar 20, 2018 precise word count definitions will vary, but as a general rule of thumb, a short story is anything up to about 7500 words sometimes 10,000, with higher word counts typically called novelettes, and short novels called novellas. Up to 150,000 is fine, but check youre not waffling. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. The actual word count for harry potter and the sorcerers stone is 78,792 and my utility calculates 77,876. A manuscript over 40,000 words is considered to be a novel. A good way to gauge appropriate length is to check out similar books for comparison. We explain two easy methods to estimate your book s page count. But those requests are extremely rare, as the majority will set a limit of 8k. Mar 20, 2020 someone once said no good book is ever too long, and no bad book is ever too short.

Youll see the number of characters and words increase or decrease as you type, delete, and edit them. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel. Despite a difference in their average word counts, both bradbury and carver share a wide variation in story lengths. What is a reasonable estimate for the minimum length, in word count, for a nonfiction book. Thats not counting his short stories ive read individually and not counting for the books ive read multiple times. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. John h watson and his overly smart and observant roommate, sherlock holmes. If youre using open office, the word count is visible in the bottom left corner. Word count signals to people what kind of book theyre dealing with. For more information on word counts for childrens book, check out this post. Also, heres another list i may swipe and add in here. Everything you need to know about novel word counts nathan. Nonfiction books also vary tremendously in word count. Between 80,000 and 89,999 words is a good range you should be aiming for.

This number can vary depending on if youre writing dialogue or how short each. Fleshing out an imagined historical world lends itself to a higher word count, so historical fiction tends to be closer to 100,000 words. The word counts of some famous novels for comparison. Toegther, they solve the mystery behind the word rache, the german word for revenge, written in someones blood. Jun 15, 2017 this is a general list of age categories and word counts for childrens books. Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story.

If youre writing your first novel, the general rule of thumb for novel writing is a word count in the 80,000 to 100,000 range. Calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. Alternatively, this is an acceptable length for a short work of nonfiction. We analyzed the nyt bestsellers to see what the optimal length and word count is. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. Anything in this word count wont scare off any agent anywhere. As with everything else when it comes to writing a book, these are only guidelinesnot rules. Word counts of the most popular books in the world date august 3, 2017 if youre a big reader then youve probably read a mixture of very short and very long books in your lifetime.

The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Personally, ive always considered 4,000 words to be a sweet spot for short story word count, but bradbury teaches us that you can create amazing storylines in both fewer and more words. Everything you need to know about novel word counts. Yet any piece of fiction climbing over the 110,000 word mark also tends to give editors.

In his words, sherlock holmes was taking an undue share of his imagination. However, very few novels these days are as short as that. Word count matters because every book, regardless of genre, has an inherent. Up to 180,000 words, you really, really need to justify that word count. Yes, having a book that is overly short or overly long for its genre will incrementally decrease your odds of finding traditional publication. Short and punchy books are 40,000 to 60,000 words, but many nonfiction books are lengthy. 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.

Word count matters because every book, regardless of genre, has an inherent contract with the reader. If we wrote something with so many complicated plots and twists, we think were with sir conan doyle here. Of course, rules are made to be broken, especially in literature. As you can see, established authors get much more flexibility when it comes to the length of their book. Well, different publishers look for different lengths for different genres. Use our handy word counter tool to check the word count for your book. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is the quality of your manuscript. So we are talking about writing and publishing very short ebook reads here. But i think word count is the easiest way to measure story length. Average word count in a book book editing services. Word counts for childrens books i received a request awhile ago to do a post on word counts for different age categories in childrens lit. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Apr 23, 2018 standard word count ranges for various genres.

Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count. In other words, anything up to 120,000 words, no problem. Jun 27, 2019 well, if your goal is to publish and sell your novel, those rules are pretty darn important. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. From this point, search for your book, click on the title within the list of results, and on the following page youll find the book s word count. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. You can also copy and paste text from another program over into the online editor above. Philemon has more verses than obadiah the shortest book in the old testament, but fewer words. 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.

If we were going by verse count, wed still know the shortest books of the bible, but wed have them out of order. When it dips below 80k, it might be perceived as too shortnot. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. Duotrope a free writers resource listing over 3950 current fiction and poetry publications caps their search for short story publishers at 7,500 words, which means most publishers are looking for stories of less than that length. Some are as short as 50,000 wordsthe perfect book for a beach vacation. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. 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. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words.

I suspect youre a student of life too, so perhaps you should choose the same. It seems like ya novels are getting longer and longer nowadays, but maybe my attention span is getting shorter. A suitable boy by vikram seth 591,554 words source atlas shrugged by ayn rand 561,996 words source war and peace by leo tolstoy 561,304 words source infinite jest by david foster wallace 543,709 words source a storm of swords by george r. I consider myself a student of life, so i selected student and continued on. By most peoples standards, 40,000 words would be pretty short for a novel. The complete stories average around 1500 words, with the longest at around 2500 and the shortest at 311 yeah, not really a short story, but the next shortest one is 1,100. 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. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book. The daily word counts of 19 famous writers word counter blog. Within short stories, there is a further breakdown to define super short stories as flash and microflash. 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.

A compelling story will carry most readers through longer word counts than the standard ranges without their noticing. But that contract is dependent upon the book s genre. Most print publishers prefer a minimum word count of around 70,000 words for a first novel, and some even hesitate for any work shorter than 80,000. Well, to help you decide, i have compiled the word counts from the top five short stories of seven different authors. Precise word count definitions will vary, but as a general rule of thumb, a short story is anything up to about 7500 words sometimes 10,000, with higher word counts typically called novelettes, and short novels called novellas. I agree that it seems like for a debut author, the agent really looks at that word count. There are plenty of books that purposefully play with the word counts of their chapters. 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. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists. This is a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, womens, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror.

It measures a short story by reading time, rather than page length or word count. Get started by typing directly into the text area above or pasting in your content from elsewhere. The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916. Weve got all the answers, learn the average wordcount for every type of novel, novella and. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. Short stories are often defined as any story under 7,500 words. To put this in perspective, a paperback of 100 pages would hardly be as thick as your little finger. In some cases, these books will have no words at all, such as for the very small child who likes to feel the fluffy cotton tail of a bunny or push the squeaker for a duck quack. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Jul, 2017 i dont think there is a way and this is odd. Editor dana isaacson discusses desirable word counts for different genres.

Everything you need to know about word count and book length for books. Yet any piece of fiction climbing over the 110,000 word mark also tends to give editors some pause. What is a good way to get the word count of a kindle book. If they typed 300 double spaced pages, is that enough to match their competition. I am currently at 20k words between 16 stories, complete and 3 incomplete. I have therefore made some averages, based on what ive heard from publishers and agents at childrens book events, and from research and reading. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. Novelty books include popups, puzzles, pulltabs and other interactive features. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. May 14, 2018 literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. Here are some useful guidelines to help you assess how long your book should be. Word counts of the most popular books in the world foster. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. 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.

How to explain this dramatic shift, and whether the trend will continue, remains to be seen. I was scared that agents would reject my book simply because i had got the length wrong. This looks like a simple question, but you have to look at several factors before you can determine optimum length. What is the proper word count for a collection of short. Of the 161 stories listed, 3081 is the median word count number in the middle and 4052 is the average word count. 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.

For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you 41,212. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. Jan 14, 2014 is there a keyboard shortcut for word count. The word count to aim for with this type of book is usually between 500 and 600 words. Chapter books will come in at the lower end of the spectrum, while middlegrade books meant for older readers may even slightly exceed 55,000 words. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. A very good, very short one might be as little as 45 or 50,000. But ebooks dont have printing costs, and you cant tell at a glance how long they are. These are the short works that literary publications tend to publish most oftenmagazines like clarkesworld, ploughshares, and carve welcome short stories, though they sometimes publish longer works as well.

As with many publishing standards, word count guidelines exist for a number of reasons including marketing and sales but also to help create stories that are free from plot or pacing issues that can exhaust readers. It mattered a lot in print books, where a book that was too short or too long would be rejected for printing and visual reasons. The fall of the house of usher by edgar allen poe 7225 words so, how long is a short story. Word counts of the most popular books in the world. Second john has fewer verses than third john, but more words. Putting the book word count aside, each of the four types of books has its own appeal. On average, there are about 300 words per page in a book. And, in case youre wondering, here are the average word counts for other popular genres. A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words. Search for word count totals in books word counters. To check word count, simply place your cursor into the text box above and start typing. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. Do short ebook novellas sell better than longer novels.

A short story has a word count of under 20,000 words though anything over. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. Nitin paranjape 8 comments the short answer is, yes, there is a keyboard shortcut, and i will give it to you at the end of this blog post. Also known as microfiction, microstories, shortshorts, and nanofiction are usually less than 1,000 words. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. A study in scarlet 43,625 words the sign of the four 43,309 words the hound of the baskervilles 59,392 words. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a word count guideline. To view word count in pages on a mac, go to the toolbar and click view show word count. The best way to find out how many pages will be in your book is to use this calculation method.

Sep 16, 2019 first published beetons christmas annual in 1887, this novel introduces us to the war veteran dr. I know this book is a shade under 20,000 words, so now i can say with certainty that any ebook listed on kindle with around 100 pages, has a word count of less than 20,000. In all cases, you can find an author who has successfully pushed the envelope one way or another. Aug 03, 2017 word counts of the most popular books in the world date august 3, 2017 if youre a big reader then youve probably read a mixture of very short and very long books in your lifetime. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. As a reader, ive never felt a good book was too long, even more than a thousand pages. I have often looked this up and got different results, which makes it very confusing.