Youll always find exceptions, but if youre a new author, dont stray too far from the norm. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. Famous novels have been extremely long, like 530,000 words for victor. Jul 18, 2014 if you liked electric literatures game of books infographic that compared the length of a song of ice and fire to classic novels, you might enjoy this infographic created for cartridge discount. Click librarian or teacher and then search for books like yours click on the titles to get all kinds of info about them, including wordcount. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. Picture book writers are often tempted to add scenes and secondary characters that make the story unnecessarily complex. This handy word counting tool runs in all popular web browsers such as firefox, chrome, opera, safari, internet explorer. Hearthkeeper by cordelia kingsbridge, love, sex, and understanding the universe by harrie farrow, rubble an. Popular novel word count the worlds largest word count. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. Word count of popular fantasy and science fiction series. Middle grade word count is typically 20,000 to 55,000.
I started this blog as a resource for myself, using wordpress so i could access my word count data from anywhere in the world, and easily share this data with friends. These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and. Surely when writing the important thing is to get words on the page even if theyre in pink comic sans. Cs lewis the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe 38,421 prince caspian 46,290 the voyage of the dawn treader 53,960 chuck palaniuk choke 70,562 fight club 53,267 rant 75,223 invisible monsters 60,930 lullaby 64,737 philip k. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. If you count waggle then in some of steven eriksons books all uses of the word eyebrow are them being raised. See which sizes feel the best in your hands and check each books page count to get an even better idea of how your book would feel if it had the same trim size and page. Aug 15, 2019 average word count for this book genre. Unfortunately they dont have all books, but they do have the most popular ones.
With books like twilight at 118,975 words and divergent at 105,143 words, this genre has been trending higher. Safe in your fire by darien cox, asking for it by lilah pace, the cartel by e. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. Now, they dont offer word count or running time for books, but they do have a search api. All of these are average book word count ranges and should not be taken as the definitive word count you must reach in your book. Search for word count totals in books word counters. Word count for novels and childrens books at the guide to literary agents blog. It was also rather repetitive overall, with the phrase raised an eyebrow accounting for 77% of all eyebrow raising. From picture books to ya information to get you started at. For example, if an author has to write a minimum or maximum amount of words for an article, essay, report, story, book, paper, you name it.
List of standard books sizes to make the right size selection. Word count picture book, middle grade, ya lisa lewis tyre. The line chart implies a gradual change occurs between the data points, and deemphasizes that there are individual books being added to the cumulative word count of a series. To find pretty much any kids ya word count, you can use the ar bookfinder. Length of a book is typically associated with its sizespecifically page countleading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length. Aug 05, 2019 if youre not a thriller author, i wont keep you in suspense. This city of flowers by victory jones, rock by anyta sunday, from the ashes by marie brown, put out the light.
The books are wellloved all over the world because of well, magic. Lets start with middle grade since thats what i write. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. Compiling a list of longest novels yields different results depending on whether pages, words or characters are counted. Jan 18, 2012 list of popular ya novels word counts if youre like me, you obsess over the word count of your novel. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. May 15, 2011 well, while the accelerated reader program is lame in a lot of ways, this is a very handy tool. For debut books in this field the average word count tends to be 35k and it has therefore become the marker many industry professionals look for in queries from new writers. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. Everything you need to know about novel word counts nathan. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. Famous book series and novel word counts number of words.
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. Aug 03, 2017 word counts of the most popular books in the world. Ebook word count should also be accounted for when setting the price of an ebook. May 14, 2018 literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction.
Popular novels word count 100k 105k books goodreads. When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12yearolds and could maybe be considered tween, using the term upper middle grade is. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read. Brandon sanderson is the only other author to hit 100% eyebrow raising in mistborn 1. The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000word range. Apr 23, 2018 this post covers why word count matters for novels, the standard word count ranges for various genres, and the word counts of some famous novels. I have often looked this up and got different results, which makes it very confusing.
Chapter books would be on the lower end, while upper middle grade would be fine in the upper range. His book a man in full is 370,000 words and it took him eleven years to finish. Jun 15, 2017 this is a general list of age categories and word counts for childrens books. Feb 09, 2015 word counts of popular ya books as i started drafting my new wip a ya scifi thriller i began wondering what word count i should aim for. My point is that your genre will likely dictate your word count. The daily word counts of 19 famous writers word counter blog.
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. Everything you need to know about novel word counts. Writing towards a word count might not work for everybody, but having a rough goal in mind certainly helps me when im sketching out chapters and undertaking my first draft. Tucker max tucker has sold over 5 million books as a 4x nyt bestselling author and is the cofounder of scribe. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. However, book length varies widely between genres, among authors, and based on. 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 this post were going to explain word count and how it affects your chance of. 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. Im curious about your advice compose the novel in the standard format from the start rather than changing it later why does this matter. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts.
Books in this genre are also often gag gifts or are meant to be facetious. Several factors go into the price of an ebook, such as author popularity, series number, and demand for the information for nonfiction. Wordcounter will help to make sure its word count reaches a specific requirement or stays within a certain limit. If youve ever read a joke book or a book revolving around a humorous endeavor of some sort, it falls under this book category. In light of this, several reedsy editors have been kind enough to offer tips for authors who are in the revision process and looking to cut down on word count. However, he never seemed to be in a rush to finish his books.
This post covers why word count matters for novels, the standard word count ranges for various genres, and the word counts of some famous novels. I suspect youre a student of life too, so perhaps you should choose the same. Were not even close to hitting the wordcount ceiling. When writing for the younger ages especially, every word must count. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. The average word count for a typical novel ranges anywhere from 70,000 to 120,000 words, with the average hanging around 90,000.
On the high, high end weve got gone with the wind at 418,000 words, and more recently a suitable boy at almost 600,000 words. In a typical contemporary book, you will have between 60,000 and 90,000 words. Here is everything writers need to know about novel word counts. I use the running time of the audiobook to come up with the word count total. I know were in the twitter age of 140 characters, but limiting a great book to 80,000 words just rubs me the wrong way and always will. The word count range for young adult is 55,000 to 90,000. While you were at it, you should have used an appropriate type of chart. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Popular novels word count 95k 100k books goodreads. Use these numbers as a baseline for your writing goals. At the end of this article, youre going to find a guide to suggested word count length for most every popular genre. Counting chickens a few words about word counts at hope vestergaards site.
There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book. I have therefore made some averages, based on what ive heard from publishers and agents at childrens book events, and from research and reading. For novels specifically in the young adult genre, the typical range is between 55,000 79,999 words. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by. What is a reasonable estimate for the minimum length, in word count, for a nonfiction book. If youve read our related article on how many words are in a novel youll recall that the typical word count for a novel according to is 80,000 to 109,000 words. There are no hardandfast rules when it comes to what word count a novel in a particular genre should be. If you liked electric literatures game of books infographic that compared the length of a song of ice and fire to classic novels, you might enjoy this infographic created for cartridge discount. Readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. 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.
Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. The graphic looks at the length of some famous novels, poems, and plays from literary history. Jun 27, 2019 of course, hiring a professional editor does come with a price tag, and most freelancers calculate their costs based on the number of words. And since word count information isnt easily available, some of these numbers may have been estimated based on page counts and may not be all that accurate. It helps to spend some time in a library and this could be your home library or a bookstore with a measuring tape and to measure some of the books in your books genre. Sep 18, 2017 older books might not reflect the current market.
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