In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. Lewis the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, roald dahls charlie and the chocolate factory. Thats generally considered enough information to make a reader feel like an update was worth it, its long enough for most people to read in under ten minutes, its mobiledevice friendly, and its plenty of time for things to happen. If you take the advice on book length, then a 50,000 word book might break nicely into ten chapters about 5,000 words per chapter. Also, the chapters are evenly divided into 3 titled parts. I asked agents elizabeth pomada and michael larsen of larsen pomada literary agency to add their thoughts to the subject. Harry potter and the sorcerers stone has an average of 4,560 words per chapter. A single word page is 500 words, going up to as much as 800 or as low as 400. The hunger games uses 3,700word chapters, dividing each chapter into three parts. Oct 18, 2017 as with everything else when it comes to writing a book, these are only guidelinesnot rules. 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. Now that you know the average number of words per page in your book, you can calculate the page count with a little arithmetic.
This is a lot of information at a glance, so ill distill a few salient observations. The title with the shortest chapters, on average, was whirlwind in the thorn tree, averaging just 2,900 words each. So the length of these affects the pacing of your story, and the way the reader experiences it. The longest average chapter lengths were lord of the rings 7,500, prince of nothing 8,700, and the beefiest chapters were found in the black company, with. If youre drawn to writing much shorter tales, the ideal is to make them part of a series or to link them in some other way so that you can publish several of them in something vaguely novelsized.
But the total number of words shouldnt be your sole measure of when to end a chapter. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 words. Average book meaning 300400 pages long is usually between 60,00080,000. It should be enough to communicate your message effectively.
The length can vary greatly between genres, though. You wont get exact, but youre wondering whether 35k is reasonable, so you dont need exact. Most middle grade novels are between 40,000 and 69,000 words long. As pointed out in the axis labels, the horizontal x axis represents chapter length in words, and the y axis represents how many times throughout the books a chapter of that length occurred. Typically, fiction uses 250 words per page, although 300 is also a common value. Mar 20, 2020 the average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 to 75,000 words, but this can vary depending upon category. New writers tend to assume that a chapter must be a certain set length in order to maintain the average novel length of around 80,000 95,000 words, but in truth, chapters can be as long or as short as you need them to be.
Calculate book page count using word count for book design. I typed out one page of the text yes it did take a while and got the approximate number of words per page. Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. This number was significantly different from the average we had seen for the estimated print length that had been given in the product details of each books amazon sales page. I use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. That means the average word count for each numbered section is a whopping 76,000. You dont have to pick a number like 80,000 and then divide it by 30 chapters to give you 2500. It contains 38 lines per page, with an average of 12 words per line, thus 456 words per book page. Some 6090k ya books get classified as hilo, but i dont think they were specifically written for the category. Analyzing chapter lengths in fantasy fiction creativity hacker. Jan 08, 2018 total number of words in your word document divided by number of words per book page your page count so far then add in all the extra pages for your front matter, back matter, images, chapter titles, and partsection openers see method 1, above. The average nonfiction book, if such a thing exists, runs about 50,000 to 75,000 words, but this can vary depending upon category.
Your target audience for these is kids ages 4 to 8. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. Today, even after the introduction of what amazon calls version 2. That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king. There is interesting chapter length analysis available on creativity hacker.
Some will tell you 2,500 words is the average, while. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. Over that size is the territory of the academic or technical business book. The red vertical intercept here represents the series average chapter length, which is around 6,000 words. Horror is much like mystery in the sense that you dont want to drag these novels on too long. But again as a surprise to me, dune was a close second, averaging just 3,800 words per chapter. A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. The word count at big five publishers had a slightly narrower range. The average fiction book is about 80,000 to 100,000 words, which is about 246 to 307 ebook pages. There are plenty of books that purposefully play with the word counts of their chapters. Some publishers have series of books with a maximum of pages. Each chapter in your book tells a ministory that forwards your overall plot. Then i counted the average number of pages per chapter, and the number of chapters.
However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers around 50,00070,000 words. May 11, 2009 hello, ive just received a contract for an academic book at 110,000 words with what looks like a 5 per cent capacity to go over, which is supposed to include the index. Even if youre not using sections to number off parts of your novel, and. The hunger games has 27 untitled chapters, and about 3700 words per chapter. How many words are in an average chapter in a novel. Did the math and created a guideline for myself to use. Early readers are the earliest chapter stories that a kid can get. A single novel page runs from 200400 words, heavily influenced by the size of font, book, etc. A statistical analysis of robert jordans the wheel of time. What is the average amount of words per chapter in a young. The study found the average chapter length in fantasy novels ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 words. Never write a chapter longer than 4,000 words bookfox. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words.
Do you want the pace to be brisk to the reader and skip in a staccato. This averages to about 22 to 23 chapters per novel, with the average chapter length around 4,280 words. The average words from 60,000 words to 200,000 or more words in a whole novel. The average mean word count was about 53,000 words.
Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot. And youll need as many chapters as it takes to tell your story or teach your howto information. The total page count excluding appendices and index is 204 pages, thus about 93,000 words. The typical range is 3565 pages for a chapter book, 4590 for a lowmiddlegrade, 90120 for a middlegrade, 150200 for a young, young adult, but these are just averages. Words counts of bestselling novels better novel project. You shouldnt set manuscript guidelines for yourself on chapter length. Frequently asked questions about children s writing. The average adult novel runs approximately 100,000 words while those in other categories run 80120,000 words. Using this exercise, you should end up with a good idea of book length expectations for a novel like yours. Eye of the world was one of the more normally distributed book in terms of chapter wordcount, which essentially means it had a mostcommon chapter length and a comparable number of chapters that were longer or shorter the dragon reborn was rightskewed, which means there was a heavy distribution of.
Perkins agency in new york says its much easier to market a firsttime novelists book if the word count falls between 80,000 and 100,000 words, or roughly 300 doublespaced, typed pagesthe average novel length. Look for your chapters to have those similar elements. Onethird of the novels that come into the agency are rejected because theyre too long or short, perkins says. Theyre very short in terms of manuscript length 1,500 words max but are broken up into either chapters or vignettes that will give the reader the feeling of reading a book with real chapters in it. How to write early readers, easy chapter books, and. To give you a general idea of the average chapter length, the range is usually between 3,000 to 5,000 words. That said, if your book is around 40,000 words, youre in good company. The goal you should be going for is to advance the story a sufficient amount to keep people interested and to make them eager to read. 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. The longest average chapter lengths were lord of the rings 7,500, prince of nothing 8,700, and the. I would certainly keep chapters within a certain range of between 1500 to 5000 words, with the average at around. A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words.
Jun 27, 2019 a story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. You dont have to pick a number like 80,000 and then divide it by 30 chapters to give you 2500 words a chapter average. When you find those commercial breaks, end your chapter and start a new one. Usually, this is about 400 for a standard academic book but only about 350 if the page size is demy octavo.
A number of fanasy novels were analyzed including dune, the wizard of earthsea and the lord of the rings. Why chapter length matters more than you think medium. Writing middle grade a look at the numbers hannah holt. 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. Each chapter is a mini story in its own right, so to work properly, just like any story, each chapter must have, as a bare minimum, a beginning, a middle, and an end. Knowing how many words in a novel is the first step toward writing a book. The last unicorn has a chapter that is 23,000 words long. Armed with these word counts, i now have a range of lengths that have been proven popular.
It is feasible to count the number of words in a published chapter. So, whats the sweet spot for an average chapters word count and. However, many authors, frustrated with the low price of ebooks, have taken to writing ebooks that are between 40,000 and 50,000. For example, hyperion chapter book manuscripts must currently be 2,5005,000 words maximum. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. May 12, 2012 new writers tend to assume that a chapter must be a certain set length in order to maintain the average novel length of around 80,000 95,000 words, but in truth, chapters can be as long or as short as you need them to be. Before you decide your average chapter length, its a good idea to think about the purpose behind dividing a book into chapters. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. Chapters are usually under 25 and chapter length varies greatly between authors because authors use them differently to segment the story. So that usually includes everything from chapter books, to middle grade, to young adult novels.
For example, if your book has about 20 chapters, you can put about 10,000 words in each chapter. It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in general, 250300 words per page. Oct 22, 2010 early readers are the earliest chapter stories that a kid can get. In other words, let your content dictate your chapter length, not the other way around. However, as i understand it, the index isnt done until the final proofs are in place so as to get the page numbers right, and so im not sure how much buffer to leave. Oct 27, 2018 i use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. Unfortunately, they never agree on what the standard is. A novelist of my acquaintance insists that the only way to estimate the number of words in a book is to multiply the number of pages by 250. Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story.
Simply divide the total word count from your word document by the number of words per page. Once you have a vision for your booksmall, standard, or wide formatyou can move on to the second step in deciding how many words you should write. There are plenty of books that exceed the 5000 words per chapter barrier. Now we have computers and word processing software. Or to put it another way every chapter needs a three line plot. Especially since everyone has different opinions on what is a good chapter length. As with everything else when it comes to writing a book, these are only guidelinesnot rules. Analyzing chapter lengths in fantasy fiction creativity. There are no hardandfast rules on how long or short a chapter needs to be. But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer, lengths may also vary by subgenre. But remember, this is more of a guideline than a rule. What do most writers see as a good average chapter length.
And a typical howto nonfiction book might need between 7 and 12. How does your book measure compare to whats succeeding in todays marketplace. For full length novels on wattpad, the average or recommended length is generally 20003000 words per chapter. Hello, ive just received a contract for an academic book at 110,000 words with what looks like a 5 per cent capacity to go over, which is supposed to include the index. Sep 20, 2019 for example, agatha christie, one of the bestselling mystery writers of all time, write between 40,000 and 60,000 words per book. May 28, 2011 average book meaning 300400 pages long is usually between 60,00080,000. Jun 05, 2017 so childrens book manuscript chapter length is a big question that ive received many times about all sorts of childrens books that have chapters. A typical popular business book runs 25,000 to 75,000 words. If im writing a novel, this gives me 40 chapters and 70,000 words when im done. Aug 05, 2019 for most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. Why does the length of a typical novel fall in the 80. So childrens book manuscript chapter length is a big question that ive received many times about all sorts of childrens books that have chapters. Most adult books are about 90,000 words, and no longer than 100,000 words unless youre jk rowling.