How many words in a novel? Average word count for books by genre

Follow PHEBINHVANHOC on

YOU ARE READING: How many words in a novel? Average word count for books by genre – Publishing Talk AT PhebinhvanhocEN

Do you want to know how many words you should aim for? here are the average word counts by genre.

How many words does a novel have? And what about non-fiction? Size Matters. You need to know the length of the manuscript you need to work on for your genre, be it fiction or non-fiction. It will help you set goals and plan your writing routine, be taken seriously by agents and publishers, help you secure a publishing deal, and meet your readers’ expectations. here are the average word counts and page numbers by genre.

You are reading: Word count of books

reading time: 10 minutes

how many words in a novel – at a glance

A typical novel is around 80,000 words, but can be 60,000 to 100,000+ words li>
know your target word length so you can pitch professionally and track your progress
correct word count is important especially for early novels
To calculate approximate page length, divide your word count by 275
Different genres have different conventions and length expectations, but there are always exceptions.

how many pages?

remember lady sally markham from little britain? she was the prolific romance novelist based on, well, you know who. reclining on her chaise longue, eating truffles, she dictated another novel to her long-suffering secretary, miss grace, regularly punctuated with: “how many pages?”

while dame sally’s motives may have been to lazily fill in the blank with whatever old junk to meet a publication deadline, as a writer you really need to know how many pages, or rather, words, you should aim for. (we’ll look at page numbers later, too), but where do you start?

How many words does a novel have?

You might think that a novel can be as long as you want: as long as it takes to tell the story. but size matters. Any author who has been asked by their publisher to cut down to 20,000 words will tell you that there are rules and conventions around acceptable length. these depend on the type of novel, its genre, and even whether or not it is his first novel.

But how long is too long? And when do you fall short of the length of your words?

A typical novel is 80,000 words long, but can be between 60,000 and 100,000 words. As a general rule, you should stick well to these parameters for a first novel.

A typical novel is approximately 80,000 words, but can be 60,000 to 100,000 words.

Anything under 50,000 words is generally considered a novel. and anything over 110,000 words is often considered too long, especially for a first novel. there are exceptions, of course. Fans of established novelists and Booker Award winners like Hilary Mantel will devour her latest enormous tomes. here are some other outliers:

the five novels of patrick melrose by edward st. aubin have an average of 47,000 words each.
margaret atwood’s blind killer is over 160,000 words: twice the length of an average novel.
lucy ellmann’s ducks, newburyport, shortlisted for the 2019 booker award, is practically a single sentence spanning nearly 400,000 words.

Also, certain genres, particularly fantasy, but also some crime novels, can be 150,000 words or more.

If you’re absolutely convinced that you need at least 200,000 words to tell your story, consider breaking it up into two or even three novels; a publisher may be more interested in taking it as a two or three book deal. . And if you’re struggling to get to 60,000 words, maybe you’re writing a novel, or even a short story. Or maybe you need a new subplot, additional characters, locations, or timelines to keep your reader interested for the length of the novel.

what does 80,000 words look like on the pages? publishers calculate the extension (page length) of books based on the words per page that fit in the chosen format (book size – in height and width ) and taking into account the font and text layout used.

The traditional way of calculating words per page, and pages per book, is to “undo”. no, this has nothing to do with fishing or knitting. it is about calculating the number of printed pages (pp) of a raw manuscript. my first editorial job, as an editorial assistant for an academic press back in the last century, involved preparing final manuscripts for “delivery” to the production department. the first task was to loosen moorings. went something like this:

count. take the number of words in the manuscript.
divide. divide it by the words per page of the chosen text layout. this is the tricky part, especially for textbooks, where the layout can vary wildly. but it’s easier for novels.
add. add about 24pp. this will cover both preliminary (copyright page, index, etc.) and later (index, acknowledgments, etc.)
round up. due to the process of printing, the final extension must always be divisible by four. round up if necessary.

One way to get an idea of what kind of page lengths you should be aiming for is to simply search amazon, or any other online bookstore that lists page numbers in their catalog. Find the best-selling books in your genre and note their length.

Other useful websites include:

read length. this estimates the length and word length of books based on the length of the audiobook. look for a book similar to the one you’re writing to get an idea of what kind of length you should aim for.
word counters. uses amazon’s data feed and an algorithm to estimate word length based on page numbers, genre, and formatting.

To work from that to figure out how many words to write, you need to know about words per page.

how many words per page in a novel?

Your words per page depend on the format, text layout, font, font size, line spacing (space between lines), number of textual elements, illustrations, etc.

but let’s not worry about any of that. here’s a quick rule of thumb: divide the word count by 275. that will give you a rough idea of the final number of pages you will get. (although, in reality, it could be between 250 and 300), so an 80,000 word manuscript will turn into a 292 page book.

or do it the other way around and multiply. If you think your book should be around 284 pages, based on your research on amazon or looking at your local bookstore, you know you’ll have to write approximately 78,000 words. .

book word count by genre

There is no single answer to how many words are in a novel. while 80,000 is an average word length for the average novel (is there such a thing?), when it comes to specific genres of fiction, there is some variation. certain genres (epic fantasy fiction like game of thrones, for example) will carry more weight than your average romantic comedy.

so what are you typing? here are some examples of specific genres and a rough guide to your typical average word count. I’ve also included some specific titles within each genre, with their lengths and word counts estimated to the nearest 1000 words. but keep in mind that this is only an indicative guide. there will always be exceptions to the ‘rules’.

first fiction: 80,000 words, for the reasons described above. although there are outliers.
Literary fiction: 50,000-150,000 words. because ‘literary fiction’ is used to describe any novel that doesn’t fit easily into a specific genre, it’s hard to give a ‘typical’ word length, because it can be so broad! could be as short as the great gatsby from f. scott fitzgerald (177pp / 48,000 words) or as long as the secret history of donna tartt (503pp / 140,000 words).
romantic fiction: 70,000-90,000 words. it tends to be shorter than literary fiction or another genre of fiction. examples include the corner store at cockleberry bay by nicola may (328pp / 83,000 words).
historical fiction: 90,000-120,000+. tends to be longer than average. Examples include: The River Between Us by Liz Fenwick (512pp / 130,000 words, The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie (368pp / 112,000 words). Outliers include Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (604pp / 166,000 words).
Science Fiction: 70,000-120,000. Examples include Isaac Asímov’s Founding (240 pages/70,000 words) and Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven (352 pages/98 000 words).
Fantasy: 100,000-150,000 words Examples include The Hunger Games (384 pages/100,000) Outliers include Game of Thrones: a song of ice and fire (912 pages/250,000 words).
thrillers: 80,000-100,000+ words.examples include the girl on the train (416 pages/ 114,000 words)
crime fiction: 80,000-150,000 words examples include his bloody graeme macrae burnet project (288pp / 80,000 words) and any ier val mcdermid thing, like the distant echo (576pp / 150,000 words)
horror: 80,000-100,000 words f or example misery by stephen king (384pp / 105,000 words). his is an outlier at 1,088 pp / 300,000 words). Shorter horror novels include We’ve Always Lived in Castle by Shirley Jackson (176 pages / 50,000 words).
young adult: 50,000-80,000 words. and novels tend to be shorter than adult fiction. For example, A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness is 240pp / 65,000 words. however, obvious exceptions include anything in the fantasy genre aimed at young people, such as Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (Book 3, The Amber Spyglass, is 560 pages / 150,000 words).

how many words are there in a non-fiction book?

what if you’re writing non-fiction? here are some guidelines.

memories: 70,000-100,000 words. this is one of the best-selling nonfiction genres. memoir is different from autobiography. Anyone can write a memoir, you don’t have to be famous. and a memoir tends to be shorter than an autobiography, because it is usually a slice of life on a specific topic rather than a chronological account of everything that happened in a person’s life. Examples include Love Child by Allegra Huston (304pp / 83,000 words); maggie and me by damian barr (256pp / 70,000 words); and cult following by bexy cameron (400pp / 100,000 words).
business books: 70,000-80,000 words. business books should not be longer than necessary. they are aimed at busy people who want information without having to read a tome to get it. These readers are spending time and money on your book, and you are competing for their attention. my traditionally published business book, Catching Up With Online Marketing was 75,000 words (reduced from a first draft of 84,000 words). and reached 276pp. this is pretty typical. Other examples include How to Have a Happy Hustle by Bec Evans (304pp / 80,000 words).
Self-help: 50,000-100,000 words. self-help books can be quite short. Again, these are books where people want results, and if a short book can bring you the transformation you want in life, all the better. but there are exceptions, for something deeper and more complete. examples include why hasn’t anyone told me this before? by dr. julie smith (368 pages / 100,000 words).
intelligent thinking: 80,000-100,000 words. a newer genre, often overlapping with business and self-help books. the word length is more similar to novels or memoirs, as these are books that are read to entertain as well as inform and educate. Examples include Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (288 pages / 80,000 words).
Travel writing: 70,000-100,000 words. guides should be short and portable (in general). this is a genre where different travel editors will have specific, and very strict, conventions of word length and formatting that their authors will be informed about. on the contrary, travel writing is more like a memory, and of the same type of extension.
nature writing. 80,000-100,000 words. an increasingly popular genre, which has elements of travel, memoir and natural history writing. it is usually personal reflection on the natural world, rather than scientific writing. examples include the award-winning books h is for falcon by helen macdonald and i belong here by anita sethi (both 320pp / 88,000 words).
textbooks: vary greatly, but are the larger the more complete and, in general, the lower the academic level. a first-year nursing text could be a heavy tome. A monograph on the history of blair-era health service reforms could be a small volume.

Please note that any non-fiction may include figures, diagrams, tables, and illustrations, which will need to be taken into account when calculating word lengths. if you plan on a lot of these, you’ll have fewer words to fit on your desired page length.

there are always exceptions

While these are some rough guides to what is typical, you will notice that the ranges can be quite wide and there are always outliers. If you’re writing your first novel, just write your first draft however you see fit. but, ideally, without wasting time (and without seeming inexperienced) going too far; or write something relentlessly short.

If you’re looking for an agent, your first 10 pages are probably the most important. so focus on them, knowing that they will ask for a full manuscript if they like what they read. If you already have an agent or publisher, they will be able to better advise you on word length. then make a plan, set some goals, and write it down!

Other content

How many words in a novel? Average word count for books by genre – Publishing Talk