Average word count of a non fiction book

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. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. Count up the total number of words on 10 random full lines from different. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. Ive just about finished a nonfiction book about little known young and other heroes of the american.

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. I like your life as story by tristine ranier, but there are many others. If you stick to these when youre writing your nonfiction book, youll be fine. Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. Books in this genre are also often gag gifts or are meant to be facetious. 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. Generally speaking, traditional publishers expect completed nonfiction book manuscripts to be between 50,000 to 75,000 words. A word count guide for 18 book genres, including fiction and nonfiction. As you can see, established authors get much more flexibility when it comes to the length of their book. I advise authors to ignore word counts when writing. The most important thing here is to realize that there are always exceptions to these rules. First of all, find your word count in word by opening your document and looking at the bottom left of your screen.

A good way to gauge appropriate length is to check out similar books for comparison. A recommended wordcount might be 15002000 words but, more. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 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 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.

In a previous our free newsletter submit write now. Search for word count totals in books word counters. If youre writing a nonfiction book, be sure to look up that category to find the length of similar books. 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. Nonfiction books have shrunk drastically in the last decade. How many words should be in an adult nonfiction book. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. Know your content, know your mainline pitch and some. If a page is 500 words on an ipad, and 250 words on a kindle, it might be only 120 words on a phone.

Calculate book page count using word count for book design. That means your manuscript must be at least 3540,000 words long. 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 study done last spring showed that the average length of a nonfiction bestseller has dropped 42% in the last seven years. Youll use the word count in your word document to calculate book page count. For example, memoirs are generally 80,000 to 90,00 words. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. There is no definitive word count guide for nonfiction books due to the many subgenres. A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words. When talking about book length, its common to talk about word count.

Otherwise, the inconsistency could drive the reader away from the book altogether. My own past research on ya word count turned up 5080,000 as an average guideline. 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. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. Estimate your page count book designer linda parke. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. Using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book.

So lets begin our calculations by focusing on word count first. There are a few book word count guidelines for each genre, but these arent hard. 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. That doesnt mean you can submit a manuscript twice the length a publisher. 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. Here is what 187 words looks like in microsoft word. Take a good look at the average word counts you need for a novel or nonfiction. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is. And conversely, a longer book of over 60k words or 200 pages can command a higher price. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length.

What occurred to me while reading was how the predetermined word counts make it more difficult to query a novel that crosses categories. Anyone else with insights about memoir, feel free to chime in. 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. Generally speaking, a shorter book of 150 finished pages or 40k words or less typically commands a lower price. 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. If your book is too long and you need to cut it, dont fret. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. 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. How to set the retail price for your nonfiction book. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job.

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. 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. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. T he indie author chris fox coined the term potato chip chapters for easilydigestible book chapters of a certain size. The first book in each series below was the authors first. When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12yearolds and could maybe be considered tween, using the term upper middle grade is advisable.

By 2017, however, that number has dropped to 273 pages. Once you know your word count, follow one of our two methods below to estimate your page count. I just popped into my office and pulled a few books off the shelf. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing stack. Rachelle gardner, christian literary agent, wordserve literary group, colorado. Now the decisions can be made based on your writing and. It should be enough to communicate your message effectively. What is the ideal word count for a nonfiction book in the. A nonfiction book attractive to publishers of bestsellers starts at around 75,000 words.

Many, yes, but there are exceptions due to the layout and font size of a particular book. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Ford, glen book length average length of a non fiction book. As a general guideline, chapters should be between 3,000 to 5,000 words. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a wordcount guideline. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. With digital as well as print books available, the length of books varies. Amazon estimates a page count in an ebook to be around 187 words. So if you write a 35,000 word manuscript, your formatted book will likely be around 140 pages.

Sharp objects has a word count of 80,565 and my utility calculates it at 80,7. According to chuck sambuchino see below for word count. 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. If your book falls within the standard preferred wordcount range, its one less reason for it to be rejected. Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. 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. In 2011, the average length of a bestselling nonfiction book was 467 pages, but that dropped to 273 pages in 2017.

But depending on the ereading device and the font size setting, it varies significantly between a phone, a tablet, or a kindle. My upperlevel ya novel is 211 pages, 61,078 words, tnr 12 pt. And man, people love to point out exceptionsand they always will. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 words. I heard 10,000 words can be accepted as an ebook at a short length at least for nonfiction. Add screenshots or other graphics and youve got a nicesized ebook. 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. For example, atonement has a word count of 123,378 and my utility comes up with 110,765 words. So 50,000 words is the minimum for a nonfiction book. If your manuscript is on the short side, make this clear when pitching to a publisher and give solid. Chapters need to be relatively equal in length for the structure of the book to make sense. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. It takes the question of length completely off the table as an issue. Most agree that under 1,000 words would be rather short and that over 5,000 might be rather too long.