Average number of pages in a nonfiction book

I just popped into my office and pulled a few books off the shelf. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 words. Aug 14, 20 understanding book layouts and page margins joel, thanks a ton for all of your info. 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. I use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. It is the story that will determine how many pages, not any particular average. A type of popular business book runs from 25,000 to 75,000 words. I would echo everything that patricia said read successful memoirs and take notes, incorporate techniques used in fiction, and make sure. It really depends on the topics of your chapters and how much your text is broken up. When writing a book, is there a minimum amount of pages. This is a fairly short book, but it packs a spiritual punchand the 5 x 8 trim size is perfect to read this book sitting on the beach or on park bench. They can vary in length between just a couple of pages and 50 or 60. The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000word range. I asked agents elizabeth pomada and michael larsen of larsen pomada literary agency to add their thoughts to the subject.

Calculate the number of pages using your current word count and the appropriate formula below, calculate the number of pages you can expect in your finished book. On average there are 233 words per page for a nonfiction book and 280 words per page for a fiction book on amazon. Build your book format a paperback manuscript word for. Did you know you can estimate how many sales any ebook or print book on amazon is currently selling just by looking at its listing on amazon. Miranda is an awardwinning author of more than a dozen fiction and nonfiction books for children. While im an avid reader and enjoy long books400 to 500 pages is fine by methere is a trend for shorter books, especially in nonfiction. Basic book designnumber of pages wikibooks, open books. Do this for several books in your niche to get a targeted range. Some novels contain 50 or more and some extremely rarely contain none. How many pages would my manuscript be in paperback. Amazons most read charts rank titles by the average.

Using amazons number of words as a guide, 5,000 words would equal 26. You can follow any responses to this entry through the rss 2. So if you write a 35,000 word manuscript, your formatted book will likely be around 140 pages. Jul 24, 2006 20 years ago, the maxium number was 200 pages. That depends on how easily the words come, whether youll have to research certain parts, and a wide variety of factors. To fill a page in word, you would need around 500 words, 1. You can easily calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. Jun 24, 2019 you start the article off by posing the question. Id guesstimate that nonfiction books generally yes, this is very. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site post navigation. Traditional publishers and agents advised using the industry formula for determining word count, which is assuming certain standards 12 pt.

Estimate a small reduction for the linesperpage and the number of pages values. That means your manuscript must be at least 3540,000 words long. Generally speaking, traditional publishers expect completed nonfiction book manuscripts to be between 50,000 to 75,000 words. How to set the retail price for your nonfiction book. Dec 18, 2018 as a publisher who has laid out dozens of books for printinga 50,000 word manuscript should end up somewhere between 180 and 220 pages. Nonfiction authors dont always benefit from pricing lower. At the other end of the spectrum a book of 80,000 to 100,000 words has significant heft, 320400 pages. The ten awful truths and the ten wonderful truths about. If youre concerned about the final page count for your book, you should know that the average 6.

Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. Roughly how many pages would 50,000 words produce in a. This entry was posted on monday, may 11th, 2009 at 11. A book has far less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore.

Xerox docutech printers used for small runs of under 500 books dont print in signatures, so can print any number of pages. Once you have a vision for your book small, standard, or wide formatyou can move on to the second step in deciding how many words you should write. With longer books, you can get a rough count by adding up the number of words on an average page and multiplying by the total number of pages. Learn more about miranda at the end of this post, and learn more about the workshop here. As a reader, ive never felt a good book was too long, even more than a thousand pages. One of the questions that a new writer often asks is how long should my book be. Books on how to write proposals are often geared toward nonfiction writers. Popular nonfiction like novels, these books fall into the 70,000 to 120,000word range. This reduction will be very small, like maybe 12 lines less per page, and 510 pages less for the book.

The figure was found through looking at a number of books text stats, until brave new worlds 64,531 word count landed in the exact center of all books50% of books have fewer words and 50% of books have more words. Long book length at the other end of the spectrum a book of 80,000 to 100,000 words has significant heft, 320400 pages. It contains 38 lines per page, with an average of 12 words per line, thus 456 words per book page. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. There is no reliable data from 2012 to make a viable yeartoyear comparison. Well explain two easy methods to calculate book page count. In order for objects on your page to reach all the way to the edge of the page, those objects must extend past where the page will be trimmed by 0. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. But over the last 5 years, the number of pages has regressed to the point where only 200400 pages is now considered the upper limit of the book publishing spectrum. Special thanks to miranda paul for this guest post.

Today, however, while the physical size of a book may still matter in a bookstore, ebooks have no dimensions. The figure was found through looking at a number of books text stats, until brave new worlds 64,531 word count landed in the exact center of all books 50% of books have fewer words and 50% of books have more words. It only takes a quick scan of a handful of ebooks, say in the kindle store, to notice that the number of pages that constitutes an ebook is almost as wide as the pacific. The 32 page illustrated picture book made sense for years because the offset printing presses could accommodate huge sheets of paper that would hold 32 pages exactly. 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. Sep 29, 2014 when ebooks came into the publishing picture that changed to some extent. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000. Jun 07, 2017 in my opinion, if your nonfiction book is fewer than about 30,000 words 120 pages, it does not feel substantial enough to be real book. In this article youll discover the average number of pages for four different types of book. What is the average number of pages in a book of fiction. Learn how to estimate your page count and how long your book should.

What is a reasonable estimate for the minimum length, in word count, for a non fiction book. If you picked up a scifi or historical novel from a bookshelf, you wouldnt be surprised if it was pretty hefty and probably had a dragon on the cover. In outlining your book in 3 easy steps, editor shawn coyne says, the average novel today is about 90,000 words. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to.

A book can be 25,000 words and still be of incredible value if it is priced appropriately. The average adult novel runs approximately 100,000 words while those in other categories run 80120,000 words. But rules are made to be broken, and the most successful publishing. Nov 07, 2016 and one advantage with ebook publishing is that you can adjust your pricing at any time. If you do not use a lot of sidebars, bulleted and numbered lists, and boxed texts, your reader may be daunted by how long a chapter iseven if you have headers every few pages. Big, epic stories get anywhere from 120,000 to 200,000 words. Well, calculating it out, that would mean the average book was 240480 pages. For every available bookstore shelf space, there are 100 to 1,000 or more titles competing for that shelf space.

The average traditionally published book which sells 3,000 in its entire lifetime in print only sells about 250300 copies its first year. Sep 11, 2010 i was looking online and most of the sources i found said the average number of words per novel page is 250, and the average words per book were 60,000120,000. All you have to do is find the amazon sales rank for any ebook or print book on amazon and type that number in to our simple amazon book sales calculator below. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Although science fiction and some other kinds were now invasive and can exceed 400 pages 200,000 words. In my opinion, if your nonfiction book is fewer than about 30,000 words 120 pages, it does not feel substantial enough to be real book. The page doublespaced on the right fills less than half the page. The number of pages doesnt matter because they format differently from device to device. The total page count excluding appendices and index is 204 pages, thus about 93,000 words. Specifically, an accessible nonfiction book might be anything between about 30,000 words and 50,000 words. Your chapter structure needs to be in proportion to the overall length of the book. The average book sells 3000 copies in its lifetime publishers weekly, 2006. Well, different publishers look for different lengths for different genres. This book has 144 pages, so it contains about 28,800 words.

When a book is printed, all pages are trimmed to the selected trim size by cutting 0. That doesnt mean you can submit a manuscript twice the length a publisher recommends. When you embark on the journey of getting a book published theres a lot to consider and one of the things that should be on your priority list is how much youll be pricing your book for, which is a key piece of your book metadata. Jul 23, 2012 less than 100 pages and it becomes difficult for a printer to print the title of the book on the spine. The typical books wordsperpage count tends to range between 225 and 275an average of 250. How to make a living with your writing is my shortest nonfiction book at 27,000 words and looks fine in print. In addition, the 32 pages can all be printed on a single sheet of paper, making it costeffective.

Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing stack. As long as the book is written well and keeps the readers attention, the length doesnt matter. Have you had lots of questions over the years about words mirrored margins. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. However sometimes, like today, the reverse happens. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 to 75,000 words, but this can vary depending upon category. Somewhere around the 20 page mark is about the average. Before we go any further, stop thinking about pages. Aug 05, 2019 thats approximately 300 pages of doublespaced type. You might be more surprised if a ya novel required olympianlevel arm strength to lift. By 2017, however, that number has dropped to 273 pages. When writing a book, is there a minimum amount of pages that it should have. When planning your nonfiction book it helps to have an idea of how long a book needs to be to be marketable.

When talking about book length, its common to talk about word count rather than page count. Likewise, digital books can be any length you want. Just remember, with so much diversity in nonfiction, you have even less of. Count up the total number of words on 10 random full lines from different places and divide by 10 to get the average wordsperline count the number of lines on each page to get the linesper page check that the book actually starts on page 1 sometimes the stuff before it starts is counted then. Nonfiction requires more thinking time from your reader, so you need to consider the role of your book. In the publishing industry, 250 words is considered a printed page of text. Simply divide the total word count from your word document by the number of words per page. 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 2011, the average length of a bestselling nonfiction book was 467 pages, but that dropped to 273 pages in 2017. In 2011, the average length of a bestselling nonfiction book was 467 pages.

The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. If you want to get a target for your nonfiction book, the best thing may be to look at a dozen or so bestselling books in the genreniche youre aiming at and see what their word counts are. Pages by paperback uses an industry standard formula for english language publishing of taking the average number of words per page and multiplying it by the average number of characters per word five including a space, for six total, the product of which is then used to divide against the total character count of the project. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 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. This type of book should not go more than 200 pages, so 40,000 words is probably your max. In this article im going to attempt to answer that question. In fiction, a book about between 50,000 and 80,000 words about 200 to 300 pages in paperback. Estimate your page count book designer fiona raven. Amazons most sold charts rank books according to the number of copies sold and preordered through, amazon books stores, and books read through digital subscription programs once a customer has read a certain percentage roughly the length of a free reading sample. Book length average length of four types of non fiction book. Now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic.

The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. Average word count ranges from 70,000 to 100,000 words, although biographies of major celebrities or public figures can support a higher number. Mysteries and young adult books run between 40,000 and 80,000 words. Your completed table of contents will then become the roadmap for writing your book. Professionals in the publishing business use word count for the size of stories, because rega. The 1 thing you need to do to write a new york times. Less than 100 pages and it becomes difficult for a printer to print the title of the book on the spine. There is a basic method by which you compute an average it is standard math. Times new roman, doublespaced, leftside justified only, 1. By reading quickly, learning and doing, your reader will get good value, even from what you might consider to be a shorter book.

Jan 08, 2018 wondering how many word pages equal a book page. There are no hardandfast rules for the number of pages in a book. A typical number is 12 to 18 but you might have 8 or even 25. Elizabeth said, for nonfiction books, it depends on the kind of book. May 11, 2009 word count and book length one of my biggest problems as a publisher is having authors deliver more than was agreed to. He wrote, the number of e book singles any e book between 5,000 and 30,000 words in length published in the third quarter increased a whopping 27 percent compared to the second quarter of 20. Jan 07, 2015 that decisionto design the book for an economical printing modelwas genius and partly responsible for its huge popularity. For childrens fiction, the general rule is the younger the audience the shorter the book, and for ya novels the average is 50,00070,000 words. Youll probably be familiar with these premium formats. If im writing a novel, this gives me 40 chapters and 70,000 words when im done.

Aug 12, 2008 write as many pages as it takes to tell the story. Roselynne asks, im writing a book on the computer and i wanted to know how many book pages there are per computer page. If your manuscript is on the short side, make this clear when pitching to a publisher and give solid. Nor do the number of pages determine how long you will spend writing it. This format generally averages about 300 words per page, thus about 30,000 words per 100 pages. By 2017, that number had plunged 42 percent to 273 pages. One of the questions that new writers always ask is how long should my nonfiction book be. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words. That means 75,000 words equals 300 pages, which is just about perfect for a first novel. With digital as well as print books available, the length of books varies.