Average word count of a non fiction book

Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. Add screenshots or other graphics and youve got a nicesized ebook. What occurred to me while reading was how the predetermined word counts make it more difficult to query a novel that crosses categories. When talking about book length, its common to talk about word count. Most traditional publishers will place restrictions on an author and require that the manuscript not exceed a specified word count, unless special concessions are made. If a page is 500 words on an ipad, and 250 words on a kindle, it might be only 120 words on a phone. And conversely, a longer book of over 60k words or 200 pages can command a higher price. Nonfiction books have shrunk drastically in the last decade. Ive just about finished a nonfiction book about little known young and other heroes of the american.

Take a good look at the average word counts you need for a novel or nonfiction. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Generally speaking, traditional publishers expect completed nonfiction book manuscripts to be between 50,000 to 75,000 words. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. The first book in each series below was the authors first. I advise authors to ignore word counts when writing. A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words. The retail price you set for your book impacts your profit margin. Rather than focusing on the fictionnonfiction aspect of a memoir, read books specifically about writing memoir. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 words. Know your content, know your mainline pitch and some.

But, most nonfiction publishers want to be sold the concept, and therefore be able to discuss the direction of the project, before you write the book. If your book falls within the standard preferred wordcount range, its one less reason for it to be rejected. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. A good way to gauge appropriate length is to check out similar books for comparison. Rachelle gardner, christian literary agent, wordserve literary group, colorado. If the content is stepbystep and high quality, 15 pages is enough for a 99 cent kindle book or a freebie used for lead generation. As you can see, established authors get much more flexibility when it comes to the length of their book. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. According to chuck sambuchino see below for word count.

Sharp objects has a word count of 80,565 and my utility calculates it at 80,7. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. If you have a 1,000word chapter, a 4,000word chapter, then a 2,000word chapter, then you need to make it clear to the reader that each has a unique value. By 2017, however, that number has dropped to 273 pages. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures.

A study done last spring showed that the average length of a nonfiction bestseller has dropped 42% in the last seven years. A publisher with a production department that knows what theyre doing can estimate book length from a manuscript formatted in courier 12point, 1 margins, 25 lines per page. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. Most agree that under 1,000 words would be rather short and that over 5,000 might be rather too long. As a nonfiction writer myself, i know this is tough. The best thing that you can do is look over comparable books and try to judge word count by their size, average wordspage, and illustration content.

However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. If your manuscript is on the short side, make this clear when pitching to a publisher and give solid. Many, yes, but there are exceptions due to the layout and font size of a particular book. Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. A nonfiction book attractive to publishers of bestsellers starts at around 75,000 words. But depending on the ereading device and the font size setting, it varies significantly between a phone, a tablet, or a kindle. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. So 50,000 words is the minimum for a nonfiction book. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. The most important thing here is to realize that there are always exceptions to these rules. 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. And man, people love to point out exceptionsand they always will. Search for word count totals in books word counters.

It should be enough to communicate your message effectively. If yes, then most publishers still work on specific word count lengths for books so youll probably be aiming for around 60,00080,000 words for nonfiction. Using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book. In a previous our free newsletter submit write now.

Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. In 2011, the average length of a bestselling nonfiction book was 467 pages, but that dropped to 273 pages in 2017. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Estimate your page count book designer linda parke. How to set the retail price for your nonfiction book. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a wordcount guideline. 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. So if you write a 35,000 word manuscript, your formatted book will likely be around 140 pages. That doesnt mean you can submit a manuscript twice the length a publisher. My upperlevel ya novel is 211 pages, 61,078 words, tnr 12 pt.

With digital as well as print books available, the length of books varies. Anyone else with insights about memoir, feel free to chime in. 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. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. Amazon estimates a page count in an ebook to be around 187 words.

The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. It takes the question of length completely off the table as an issue. How many words should be in an adult nonfiction book. Books in this genre are also often gag gifts or are meant to be facetious. Ford, glen book length average length of a non fiction book. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. If youre writing literary or mainstream fiction also called general fiction, the wordcount requirements and style guidelines are often not as strict as they are for genre novels. Generally speaking, a shorter book of 150 finished pages or 40k words or less typically commands a lower price. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. If youre writing a nonfiction book, be sure to look up that category to find the length of similar books.

I like your life as story by tristine ranier, but there are many others. As a general guideline, chapters should be between 3,000 to 5,000 words. If youve ever read a joke book or a book revolving around a humorous endeavor of some sort, it falls under this book category. The graph shows the average length of the top 100 bestsellers in each of the 30 main amazon kindle categories, measured in terms of the number of pages.

A recommended wordcount might be 15002000 words but, more. There are a few book word count guidelines for each genre, but these arent hard. Otherwise, the inconsistency could drive the reader away from the book altogether. I heard 10,000 words can be accepted as an ebook at a short length at least for nonfiction. There is no definitive word count guide for nonfiction books due to the many subgenres. So lets begin our calculations by focusing on word count first. If you stick to these when youre writing your nonfiction book, youll be fine. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is. When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12yearolds and could maybe be considered tween, using the term upper middle grade is advisable. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. Count up the total number of words on 10 random full lines from different.

Now the decisions can be made based on your writing and. Its often possible to take a good 30,000 words out of a book without really affecting the content, just by being rigorous about what works what words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes and chapters. Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word. For example, atonement has a word count of 123,378 and my utility comes up with 110,765 words. 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. For example, memoirs are generally 80,000 to 90,00 words. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. What is the ideal word count for a nonfiction book in the.

That means your manuscript must be at least 3540,000 words long. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen. If your book is too long and you need to cut it, dont fret. Some will tell you 2,500 words is the average, while others will say that 3,000 to 5,000 word chapters are more likely to be the norm. T he indie author chris fox coined the term potato chip chapters for easilydigestible book chapters of a certain size. Technically, in fiction, most publishers and awards consider anything over 40,000 words to be a novel, but many publishers wont look at anything under 60,000. A word count guide for 18 book genres, including fiction and nonfiction. If you have written a nonfiction book and want to know if you are hitting the wordcount sweet spot, i suggest reading widely in your area to see what others are doing this will give you a better sense of what publishers and readers expectwant. Chapters need to be relatively equal in length for the structure of the book to make sense.