Popular book word counts

Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. 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. I thought most would hover around the 85k mark, but instead, almost every novel in the list was over 100k words. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. We have compiled a list of the daily word counts of famous authors and what they had to say about writing every day what is a word count. When combined, the total harry potter word count is over a million words. This handy word counting tool runs in all popular web browsers such as firefox, chrome, opera, safari, internet explorer. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. The daily word counts of 39 famous authors writers write. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. Harry potter and the sorcerers stone is about 77,500 words total. 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.

With books like twilight at 118,975 words and divergent at 105,143 words, this. I couldnt find the word count, but the book is only 359 pages, so far smaller than his later books. Nonetheless, as someone who reads a lot in the genre and has also submitted work to competitions, agents and publishers, i thought id tackle this topic from three different perspectives. Word counter is an easy to use online tool for counting words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and pages in real time, along with spelling and grammar checking.

The 1 thing you need to do to write a new york times. Generally, there are 300 words per typed doublespaced page, using a 12 point font. Books in this genre are also often gag gifts or are meant to be facetious. Kelly, the scribe by elizabeth hunter, love is a stranger by. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. Here are some word counts of famous novels, sorted from long to short. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference.

There are exceptions, like ya books that exceed 250,000 words. Middle grade is from 20,000 55,000, depending on the subject matter and age range, and the word count of these books has been trending up in recent years. Most memoirs need to be in the 70,000 to 100,000 word range. Famous book series and novel word counts number of 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. If youre not a thriller author, i wont keep you in suspense. These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and. Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy by douglas adams 50,895 words. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. Novels for adult readers fall between 80,000 and 120,000 words. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you 41,212. When you need to know how many words, pages, characters, paragraphs, or lines are in a document, check the status bar.

And since word count information isnt easily available, some of these numbers may have been estimated based on page counts and may not be all that accurate. Put simply, the sweet spot for a novels word count is generally said to be around 8090k. We are also going to look at how harry potter is comparable to other young adult novels in regards to word count. Wordcounter will help to make sure its word count reaches a specific requirement or stays within a certain limit. Coyne uses the nanowrimo wordcount length of 50,000 words for his examples, calling 50,000 words a good foundation to build upon. Compiling a list of longest novels yields different results depending on whether pages, words or characters are counted. Word and character counts will display at the top, any writing mistakes will be. The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916. Word counts of famous book series harry potter by jk rowling. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by. Epic novels are works of fiction that are 110,000 words or over. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and.

Get started by typing directly into the text area above or pasting in your content from elsewhere. So if youre a writer looking to boost sales of your new book or if youre trying to place it on the highly coveted new york times best sellers list make sure you track your word count closely. The graphic looks at the length of some famous novels, poems, and plays from literary history. Only if youre a major celebrity can you blow right through that word count and just keep going. Word count for young adult books the word count range for young adult is 55,000 to 90,000. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the great gatsby, and slaughterhousefive are between 4050,000 words. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read. Unfortunately, they dont offer word count so ive created an algorithm based on the number of pages, genre, and the dimensions of the book.

A suitable boy by vikram seth 591,554 words source atlas shrugged by ayn rand 561,996 words source war and peace by leo tolstoy 561,304 words source infinite jest by david foster wallace 543,709 words source a storm of swords by george r. Here are some popular scifi novels and their word counts. Everything you need to know about novel word counts nathan. For a partial word count, select the words you want to count. If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words at the very least but its better to aim for 90,000. There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book. Tucker max tucker has sold over 5 million books as a 4x nyt bestselling author and is the cofounder of scribe.

Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. Since opinions vary greatly, i did some research to verify the numbers in my head. Tom wolfe is an author that has written many popular books that were. Word counts of the most popular books in the world. List of popular ya novels word counts if youre like me, you obsess over the word count of your novel. 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. Which is totally understandable, since length can be an important factor that agents and publishers look at when they receive your query letter. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. Other times, the suggested word count seems to be based only on common wisdom with no reference to real books at all.

The sorcerers stone 77,325 words the chamber of secrets 84,799 words the prisoner of azkaban 106,821 words. 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. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. Never pad your manuscript just to meet a word count guideline. Firstly, most ya books are far longer than i expected. So i think we get away with this being on the list. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Publishers want to know the overall length of your book. At the end of this article, youre going to find a guide to suggested word count length for most every popular genre.

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 eight harry potter books have an impressive combined word count of over 1 million words. Word counts of the most popular books in the world foster grant uk. And i am speaking about the daily word count for the book that you are. Popular novel word count the worlds largest word count. The books are wellloved all over the world because of well, magic. The daily word counts of 19 famous writers word counter blog. Ive attempted to correct this by using word counts. This will help determine what kind of length readers expect in popular novels, and also will give me a word count goal for writing the scenes and assignments. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors.

A books word count does matter and if you get it wrong, this can impact your book. 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 popular novel word count the. The actual word count for harry potter and the sorcerers stone is 78,792 and my utility calculates 77,876. At an average reading rate of 125 words per minute, thats about 145 hours of reading. 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. Search for word count totals in books word counters. Everything you need to know about novel word counts. Word counts the number of words in a document while you type.

The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. My point is that your genre will likely dictate your word count. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. Word also counts pages, paragraphs, lines, and characters. 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. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a. Every book is different and for any suggested word or page count you see, you are likely to encounter several popular fantasy books that are outside of it. An approximate word count round numbers based on what your wp tells you enables them to estimate costs and other factors involved in printing a book. Generally a 50,000 word novel would be the minimum word count.

As noted in the comments of that post, page count is highly variable based on text sizefont and other publication constraints and thus may not be the best measure of book length. Gardens of the moon was his second novel and his first foray into fantasy. All we have to do is use the wp tool that shows word count. However there are some interesting findings in the word counts. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. The average word count for a typical novel ranges anywhere from 70,000 to 120,000 words, with the average hanging around 90,000. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count.