And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is the quality of your manuscript. To find the word count at for a particular book, search the books title, and click on it. Word count per chapter is highly subjective, and 5,000 should be plenty. In the apply to list, select whole document and click ok.
This resizes your pages and changes your page count, which you need to know for setting your margins. Of course you can just note the word count and manually copy it to an excel sheet, but i thought to make that process automatic. There are a lot of books that fit nicely into this range, such as enders game with 100,609 words and the martian with 104,588 words. I built one logos word list like this for every single book of the bible. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. The first novel in the harry potter series, harry potter and the sorcerers stone had 76,944 words. Novel writing month so i decided to share my personal calculator. Skip this fluffernutter stand and go straight to just download it. Calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. By using these three options to more accurately define your writing, the words per page calculator should provide a better estimate on how many words you need to write to fill a page. If it happens with specific word documents, how big are these documents. Personally, i think 40,000 words is way to small for a novel and have read some publishers wont accept anything under 80,000ish. I use amazons data feeds to come up with the calculation. Word count goal counter for writers word counter blog.
Besides, this tool also includes many other features like readability, keyword density. Using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. Find the word count for published ya and childrens books. How to increase your novels word count noveldoctor. The binding, font and paper size establish how many pages a published book will be. This is not a post for the writers who have trouble writing books that arent long enough. We limit title submissions to 1,000 per week per account.
Failing to mention the word count, or committing the faux pas of stating the page count instead, will also see a quick rejection. Apr 11, 2015 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. You can approach your writing target in various ways to suit your style. Count anything is a free wordcount utility for windows. The actual word count for the hunger games is 99,750 and my utility calculates 94,743 words. Word count, with a little help from amazon alexis grant.
Its a fancy mathey way to say reverse nanowrimo national novel. It is, i think, the easiest to use to quickly find the word count of a book. Writing stack exchange is a question and answer site for the craft of professional writing, including fiction, nonfiction, technical, scholarly, and commercial writing. Calculate keywords statistics and the amount of characters in any textual source.
Jan 25, 2018 the length of a chapter in a novel should be less about words and pages and more about plot points. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. It is common for word counts to grow in length after the debut novel. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Choose your book type, genre, and audience for a word count and page number total.
Word counts may also be used to calculate measures. Wordprocessing programs have a function that calculates the number automatically, but the results are not reliable in the publishing world. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. Word count calculator free word count character count. Nanowrimo advanced word count calculator charts, percentages, stats and more. Book page count calculator how many pages is my novel. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Go play cricket or bake a souffle or save the whales.
This feature allows writers to set a word character, sentence or paragraph count goal they need to reach or must stay under in their writing. Search for word count totals in books word counters. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. Nanowrimo advanced word count calculator charts, percentages. Here microsoft word users can download and install handy files to help speed the task of formatting short story and novel manuscripts.
Whats a normal word count for a childrens novel or collection. Word is calculating the word count microsoft community. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Word count discrepencies in novel submissions a reader writes to ask. You must provide an accurate word count per page or by document when you are submitting a literary project. Word count is a very important metric of a writing. Also remember because there are a bunch of new novel imprints opening their doors, a novella is 40k or less.
Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. The final cut of my mystery novel is 72,500 words and 18 chapters so shorter chapters than yours. Ive been researching the word countspages of ya novels to make sure im not under or over. Try instead to end where theres a significant event or cliffhanger so the reader keeps turning pages. Page count is determined by the publisher, not the writer. Your best bet is to figure out what books yours is comparable to, then sit down and count the words on 23 typical pages. What do you think is a good word count per chapter. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is. On the macro level in any type of edit, but especially a wordtrimming one, you always want to start with the big picture. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic.
Never pad your manuscript just to meet a word count guideline. Also, heres another list i may swipe and add in here. One of these new features is the countdown goal counter. This is a true statement if your goal is to be published through traditional methods someday. You set a word count goal, chip away at it day by day and finish ontime. But depending on the ereading device and the font size setting, it varies significantly between a phone, a tablet, or a kindle. Authors writing your book, pupils working on your essay, selfemployed word smiths.
Those of you who dont care about traditional publishing can leave the room now. But when it was published, i found myself writing short stories. In your word document, click tools from the top menu tool bar. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. Im leaving this in the list to show that word count isnt offered for every book. Author eve tells me her book came in at 95,000 words. Ive been writing a novel over the past year, and with the help on your site as well as a few other sites, ive been converting it into manuscript format. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. 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. For full titles, authors and descriptions of these books, see whats on my travel memoir bookshelf. As a result, a 100k manuscript can size up very differently on a shelf. Here is a cut and paste from the email that i received from kate burke from diane banks agency regarding my 280k manuscript. You may turn off and then switch it back on the word count in the status bar and check if it helps.
You can easily calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. To do that, assuming you are working on word 20072010 rightclick the status bar. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. A free online word count words counter and calculator.
By most peoples standards, 40,000 words would be pretty short for a novel. Popular novel word count the worlds largest word count. Word processing programs have a function that calculates the number automatically, but the results are not reliable in the publishing world. 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. Ya manuscripts can have a word count anywhere from 55k to 90k. What is the ideal wordcount per chapter for a novel. I have created a beauteous word count tracker for you. Put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. There are several wordcount utilities around, some of them free, but i wrote this. Youll see that the aspirational reach for the sky stuff where the respondent knows nothing about the subject will get upvoted, whilst practical advice based on industry standards gets down voted. Word count calculator count total, unique and number of. Jun 27, 2019 put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. Beware of asking this kind of question of amateur forums.
How to use our book page count calculator select your word print size select the book genre enter your books word count press calculate number of pages just 4 easy steps and youre done. That left me with 66 logos word lists, each giving me every originallanguage word in a given book of the bible. Flash fictionwhatever the editor says it is, but usually under 1,000 words. To use these, go to svenjas web page of spreadsheets and download the one with. Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word.
Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the great gatsby, and slaughterhousefive are between 4050,000 words. How to calculate a word count per page pen and the pad. Aug 05, 2019 i think theres some confusion here on memoir word count vs. Basically, instead of applying a formula for word count, we apply the final format and see what results. Rising to the challenge start off small and increase your word count quota every day. If a page is 500 words on an ipad, and 250 words on a kindle, it might be only 120 words on a phone. Well explain two easy methods to calculate book page count. The length of a chapter in a novel should be less about words and pages and more about plot points.
If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. These guidelines are intended for designers of paperbacks with black and white or color interiors, with fullcolor covers. Build your book format a paperback manuscript word for. Of course, word count wont matter if a story doesnt hook the target audience. During nanowrimo, it is important that you track your word count or time. Our book page count calculator will help you figure out how many pages your final book will contain based off of our your current word count. Try not to completely tether yourself to word counts. I had to make my own by hand in excel and that took half a day by itself. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Simply paste your sentences or paragraphs into the free word count calculator, click on the count button and the number of words in your written piece will be dispalyed along with the number of times each word is repeated. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute.
For help formatting your paperback manuscript, see our guides for microsoft word for windows, microsoft word for mac and pages for mac. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. If you think a 270,000word memoir will make it past the agent, do it. I think theres some confusion here on memoir word count vs. A time to kill 168,603 the firm 142,811 the pelican brief 1,926. Theres no point in obsessing about word choice if your story has whole scenes and whole subplots you can axe.
The first version of the suite contains cheap microsoft word, excel and. So, i made up my own word count list that suits me and all that i do. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a wordcount guideline. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. Free tool to count words and characters in word, excel. Heres how to track your books the word count in word. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. Jan 15, 2020 again, depending on your version of word, there may be a different way to access the word count tool, but you can play around with it a bit it almost always will be in the tool menu. Wordcharacter counts are an essential part of the work of translators, writers, and others who need to bill based word count. In the opposite direction, it can give a more accurate estimate of how many pages you have created if you only know the word count. Tulagi hotel, my 4,000 word novel, came about after i chanced to write the first chapter at the office, over an extended coffee break, and with no intention of making it into a fullfledged book. That said, this figure differs from book to book and organization to.
Word count is the devil you have to love, or at the very least, respect. This is because these programs only count actual words, but publishers. Copy and paste your text into the online editor to count its words and characters. The word count calculator is ready to count the total number of words and characters in your written pieces of text. The counter lists all the words with the number of occurrences in the sentences.
This is not a post for writers who say theyre going to write a short story and actually end up writing a short story. Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book. Weve added some new tools to word counter which were hoping will be beneficial to all those using our word count tool. View entire discussion 26 comments more posts from the fantasywriters community. National novel writing month nanowrimo is a fun, seatofyourpants approach to creative writing. Amazon estimates a page count in an ebook to be around 187 words.
Aug 28, 2010 word count is the devil you have to love, or at the very least, respect. Jan 08, 2018 you can easily calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. On the layout tab, in the page setup group, click size, and then select more paper sizes. Whats more, theyll even calculate a rounded word count for you. Enter your books trim size into the width and height fields. The maximum word count for new authors is lower than established novelists. We want to give authors an easy way to show how long their book or novel is.
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