I have yet to read this, but given that faulkner wrote about southern life in the age of jim crow, the count is not surprising. To hear that the novel is immoral has made me count the years. These numbers are pulled from the original languages using logos bible softwareyou can see how i did it below. Where a community about your favorite things is waiting for you. You can also copy and paste text from another program over into the online editor above. Smashwords gives a precise word count for each and every b. Students, teachers, parents, and librarians can search in english or spanish using criteria such as atos book level or a lexile measure, interest level, title, author, fictionnonfiction, subject, awardwinners, state lists, ccss exemplars, and more. Eg harry potter and the camber of secrets 120,000 words. And, in case youre wondering, here are the average word counts for other popular genres. 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. The merit of using the nword is a question that is still asked in classrooms, among hiphop fans. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. You can easily calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. 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.
For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. There are some variations between versions with includedexcluded text and verses, however, for the purpose of establishing the relative lengths of each book, these counts are. Well, a debut writer is untested and they wont have a lot of sales power to their name yet. Most of my life had been spent in scifi where race is simply not an issue, or in science books of various types where race is only discussed in relation to genetics. There are exceptions, like ya books that exceed 250,000 words, but those tend to be outliers, and firsttime authors rarely, if ever, get to be an outlier. Length of a book is typically associated with its sizespecifically page count leading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length. Anything over 110,000 words is considered too long for a fiction novel. On the macro level in any type of edit, but especially a wordtrimming one, you always want to start with the big picture. These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and. In 2009, wordbridge publishing published a new edition titled the n word of. In itself, no measure is perfect but personally i find word count the most useful. For instance, when a reader picks up a thriller, they have certain expectations of what theyre about to read. Using the styles function in word can help you ensure your book s font and spacing is consistent. To check word count, simply place your cursor into the text box above and start typing.
A way to check word count of published books anita nolans blog. Is there a website that gives the word counts on books that have been written. This article suggests that essentially, it should be as long as it needs to be, meaning dont look at the word count, just get the story out then edit. New huckleberry finn edition censors nword mark twain the. Who can say it, who shouldnt, and why asim, jabari on. The 30 greatest books of all time popular novel word count. How many words in each book of the bible the holy word. Unfortunately, amazon recently removed that feature as well. The books are still available in libraries, and students can read them on their own. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Word count is very important to writing books for young children. I put in anne of green gables and clicked on the first entry, and it listed the word count as 17,129. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to.
Well explain two easy methods to calculate book page count. This tool is useful when writing essays at university to determine how many pages you are required to write. 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. 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. However, book length varies widely between genres, among authors, and based on the content of the book. For more information on word counts for childrens book, check out this post.
While anything over 40,000 words can fall into the novel category, 50,000 is considered the minimum novel length. The kindle unlimited problem it cant count words or pages. Popular novel word count the worlds largest word count. The creation of hilow books to help children with low reading levels and readers with additional learning difficulties develop their reading confidence. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 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. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Wordcounter will help to make sure its word count reaches a specific requirement or stays within a certain limit. I clicked on the unabridged version, and it lists the word count as 97,364. Jul, 2017 i dont think there is a way and this is odd. In the meantime, overwriting to the point that your draft exceeds typical word count ranges is a common issue and those widelyaccepted ranges arent completely arbitrary. That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king. Ive put together word counts for every book of the bible.
Publishers know this and often wont even look at a book submission that is too long. 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. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. Where can i find a database of all published books word. My point is that your genre will likely dictate your word count.
Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. How to write early readers, easy chapter books, and chapter. Longer word counts allowed for fantasy, scifi, paranormal, historical. For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you 41,212.
And, truth be told, early readers and chapter books are not lucrative for publishers. This handy word counting tool runs in all popular web browsers such as firefox, chrome, opera, safari, internet explorer. Theres no point in obsessing about word choice if your story has whole scenes and whole subplots you can axe. You can use the preset styles in microsoft word or modify them for a custom look. What is a good way to get the word count of a kindle book. Harper lee and mark twain didnt shy away from using the nword when. Anything in this word count wont scare off any agent anywhere. I have often looked this up and got different results, which makes it very confusing. Im trying to find the word count of the book the celestine prophecy. I came across a thread in askville that claims we can get the word count of books on amazon which have the look inside label. 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.
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. This article treats usage of the word nigger in reference to african americans and others of. Unless you have selected some text, word counts all text in the document, as well as the characters, and displays them in the word count box as the statistics. Aug 05, 2019 at the end of this article, youre going to find a guide to suggested word count length for most every popular genre. Lewis 42,715 the tequila worm canales, viola 46,118. Censoring mark twains nwords is unacceptable books the. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. Build your book format a paperback manuscript word for. I created this website to help you better gauge your book s word count, because the more examples you see and the more advice you read, the more confident youll be. Guidelines for word count for childrens books anita nolan. Jul 08, 2014 you have just discovered the wonderful world of bibliographic metadata. A guide to writing that works for fiction and nonfiction. I looked up all the books you referenced above so that i could get an idea of what i was looking for, but i didnt find text stats for them.
How to find out the number of words in a book pen and. You can view the number of characters, lines, paragraphs, and other information in your word for mac, by clicking the word count in the status bar to open the word count box. Oct 22, 2010 so why dont publishers give new writers a series. But that contract is dependent upon the book s genre. 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 and affiliated sites. Determine the industry standard of words per page for your book.
Using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book. Where can i look up the word count for popular books. While its important that every story find its natural length, it takes time to develop an instinct as to what that length is. The bot counts any substring containing the n word within a comment and only those substrings not including snigger or niggardly starting 332020. Jun 15, 2017 this is a general list of age categories and word counts for childrens books. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. While page counts are a common but not universal feature of bibliographic metadata, word counts are much less frequently provided and are not at all mandatory. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Word count, with a little help from amazon alexis grant. Are there other web applications that give the word count of a book. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing.
I have 2 daughters who are 4 and 2 and generally, the books they seem to enjoy most are on the shorter side. The graphic looks at the length of some famous novels, poems, and plays from literary history. While a general guideline is one page is 500 words single spaced or 250 words double spaced, this is a ballpark figure. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. The actual word count for harry potter and the sorcerers stone is 78,792 and my utility calculates 77,876. Is there a website that gives the word counts on books that. This is a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, womens, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror. Jun 20, 2009 how can i find out the total word count of a book. 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. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. 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 book s amazon sales page.
Compiling a list of longest novels yields different results depending on whether pages, words or characters are counted. May 29, 2014 ive put together word counts for every book of the bible. This website converts the number of words to the number of pages, online and for free. The number of pages changes depending on the number of words, the font and the font size. Yet no matter how i search, i couldnt find the text stats link. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels.
Youll see the number of characters and words increase or decrease as you type, delete, and edit them. The truth is the number of words per page depends on a variety of factors such as the type of font, the font size, spacing elements, margin spacing, and paragraph length to name a few. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. He says the key to understanding huckleberry finn is. As with everything else when it comes to writing a book, these are only guidelinesnot rules. Moving the text into microsoft word provides a count of the base word and. The average book on the planet is 65,000 words at 200 pages, which is pretty close to this method.
Surely when writing the important thing is to get words on the page even if theyre in pink comic sans. 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. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. The nword in adventures of huckleberry finn reconsidered on. Will the nwordcountbot be updated to count other words. I have tried searching the words word count plus the title of a novel, like the lovely bones, and all i get is the word count of essays and articles about the book in question, not for the book itself. Hearthkeeper by cordelia kingsbridge, love, sex, and understanding the universe by harrie farrow, rubble an. I dont need one of those equations to help calculate word count based on the number of pages times whatever.
For example, in most cases it is considered to be an industry standard for books such as novels to. 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. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. The word count 788,280 is based on the kjv and seems to be almost exactly as wed expect see our page on how many words in the bible for more information on this. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read. Word count estimates are not guaranteed to be accurate. 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. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Between 80,000 and 89,999 words is a good range you should be aiming for. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book. Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story. 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. Word count matters more than it should in my opinion.
Standard word counts for books publishing with kindle. His books include mark twain as a literary comedian, the literary humor of the. In 2009, wordbridge publishing published a new edition titled the nword of. 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. Its one of the greatest books in american literature, bradley replied.
Estimate your page count book designer fiona raven. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. 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. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. 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. Books can be as short as 25,000 words, around 100 pages, or as long as 3 million words, or about 1,000 pages. By 2017, however, that number has dropped to 273 pages.
To kill a mockingbird and the adventures of huckleberry finn. As a reader i love the huge word count novels steven king has written and the very short gems tom robbins has penned. But in other books, the word is meant to have all the pejorative connotations it. Before i started my tour of the best books i had no idea that the word nigger would pop up as often as it does. Many new writers are unaware there are guidelines and rules for numbers of pages or words per type of literature as well as specific ages each category applies to. Search for word count totals in books word counters. A guide to writing that works for fiction and nonfiction provost, gary on. 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. Jan 18, 2010 hi alexis my question is regarding the amazon word count text stats you mentioned. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. If you are an author of a book or know of a book s accurate wordcount, contact me.
Once upon a time amazon offered text stats for a majority of their books, which included word count. One thing to keep in mind is that illustrations can do a lot of the storytelling for you. Line count varies depending on page size, font size, etc. Although amazon stopped offering this for new books several years ago, the feature still remained for older books. The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000word range. The short answer to the question about the length of a story is to say every story should be as long as it needs to be. The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter its the. Sep 28, 2010 guidelines for word count for childrens books from rebecca ryals russells website. May 27, 2009 where can i look up the word count for popular books. Amazon cannot count the kindle words per page readers read, the number of pages readers flip, or the time readers spend on reading an ebook. Nonfiction books tend to be shorter, around 45,000 words on average, and novels ten to be longer, around 80,000 words on average. Sep 12, 2012 put a title the exact title in the search engine, then click on the title, or one of the titles if more than one comes up. Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book. Other famous books 22,416 the mouse and the motorcycle beverly cleary 30,644 charlie and the chocolate factory roald dahl 35,968 old yeller fred gipson 36,363 lion the witch and the wardrobe c.
A small print encyclopedia can have 200,000 words in just under 400 pages of course, so type size and format matter but this is a rule of thumb given amazons removal. Word count matters because every book, regardless of genre, has an inherent contract with the reader. The new editions alabamabased publisher, newsouth books, says. I have therefore made some averages, based on what ive heard from publishers and agents at childrens book events, and from research and reading. Using styles also saves you time because you dont have to format the font and spacing for each part of your book.
Since opinions vary greatly, i did some research to verify the numbers in my head. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. No book could possibly be as bad as nigger heaven has been painted. Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count. Im curious about your advice compose the novel in the standard format from the start rather than changing it later why does this matter. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. I used the lexham hebrew bible and the nestlealand novum testamentum graece for these word counts. Apr 07, 2012 story length has come up a lot recently, both with readers of the editors blog and with clients so, lets look a bit at story length. Word counts for chapter books and middle grade can range from 1,50030,000 or more. The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916. Dec 04, 2014 see how your word count stacks up against these popular best sellers. Too many words are a warning sign that the author does not know how to write for the age group and that the book has not been edited seriously enough. These word counts are my personal references they are not official, and do not include back matter, which is bonus material for the reader or information geared for parents, teachers, or.
By the way, if you want to know what i think of logos. However if youre curious to see what the average word count is for standard genres, check out the breakdown in the article. There are plenty of books that purposefully play with the word counts of their chapters. Are you wondering what the word count for your book should be.
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