Average word count of a book chapter

Books in literary fiction tend to have more word count, especially novels written before the 20th century, romance, and scifi. So yeah, i would say that chapter consistency above all is key. Each book section below details the breakdown of these points of view as a word count and as a percentage. Some writers, like myself at times, write long chapters. A game of thrones, by george rr martin, 298,000 words, 60 chapters, average chapter length 4,970 words. Most middle grade novels are between 40,000 and 69,000 words long. While theres plenty of room for variety, the average chapter length for a book is between 2,000 and 5,000 words, with the sweet spot lying.

May 25, 2020 word count matters because every book bears an inherent contract with the reader. 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. Now, speaking broadly, you can have as few as 71,000 words and as many as 109,000 words. The next step is to survey their lengths according to word count. The authors had sold between 10 copies and 2 million copies of their chapter books. However, there are many ya bestseller with more than 100,000 words. As a general guideline, chapters should be between 3,000 to 5,000 words. Make sure your childrens book manuscript chapter length is consistent, look for outliers, so chapters that are too long or too short based on the length that you set for yourself where you fall most of the time when youre writing. May 14, 2018 what follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres. Whatever your publisher requests is often the ideal answer. A single word page is 500 words, going up to as much as 800 or as low as 400. That number actually lines up pretty well with the data we have on this.

To find out how long should a chapter be, we examined books from a wide variety of genres and eras. Books in the romance and scifi category usually have 3000 words, while thrillers typically contain 600800 words in each chapter. Writing middle grade a look at the numbers hannah holt. This is a lot of information at a glance, so ill distill a few salient observations. Mine are around 6600 words which translate to about 20 pages in my current. Its also worth noting that the average word count figure can vary by genre. Jan 11, 2011 the list was revised in september 2010 in consultation with a number of us fiction editors, but remains focused on fiction. A short memoir would be about 65,000 words, though if youre an established author read.

This is a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, womens, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror. The wheel of time main series consists of fourteen books and a prequel. If im writing a novel, this gives me 40 chapters and 70,000 words when im done. Make a book list of your genre and buy at least 10 of them. I like chapters to be no longer than 10 pages each, with one scene per chapter. Frequently asked questions getting published meg cabot.

If i tell you that my book is 70,000 words, and send you an 800 page correctly formated ms the 1. This 2003 new york times bestseller by khaled hosseini divides its 372 pages into 25 chapters. But here, for example, are some famous novels, along with word counts and chapter lengths. A statistical analysis of robert jordans the wheel of. Frankly, ive seen, read, and enjoyed all four scenarios. In 2011, the lists average length peaked at 467 pages. Wordcount of unpopular and hefty epics looping world. Anything in this word count wont scare off any agent anywhere. Chapter books will come in at the lower end of the spectrum, while middlegrade books meant for older readers may even slightly exceed 55,000 words.

So around 4,000 words would be an average chapter length. It contains 38 lines per page, with an average of 12 words per line, thus 456 words per book page. Sometimes theyre shorter the lion, the witch and the wardrobe by c. A single novel page runs from 200400 words, heavily influenced by the size of font, book, etc.

It is feasible to count the number of words in a published chapter. The fault in our stars, by john green, 65,750 words, 25 chapters, average chapter length 2,630. Scott fitzgerald, and old yeller by fred gipson all range between 35,000 and 50,000. Still in confusion about the desirable word count for your book. Established authors often write longer biographies. However, shorter novels are preferred by most readers these days. Readers no longer tolerate novels that do not rapidly move the plot forward. For more information on word counts for childrens book, check out this post. Id think that the right length for a chapter would be one that could be read at a sitting conveniently, and would provide a useful chunk of story.

Jun 05, 2017 when worrying how many words in a chapter, keep a close eye on pacing. Feb 09, 2015 only word counts are below, not page counts, as some novels vary between editions. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. The chapter by chapter breakdown sections lists the povs in order by. Standard nonfiction business, political science, psychology, history, etc. You wont get exact, but youre wondering whether 35k is reasonable, so you dont need exact. A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words. 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. Jan 08, 2018 my manuscript word count is 54,000 and i want the book size to be 6. How many words does it take to write a young adult book. Some 6090k ya books get classified as hilo, but i dont think they were specifically.

Analyzing chapter lengths in fantasy fiction creativity hacker. Though there is no standard rule for ya books, the average is between 75,00090,000 words. Upper middle grade word count can be a little longer, as can middle grade fantasy word count, since those novels require more worldbuilding and tend to have more plot. Oct 27, 2018 james patterson the mostselling author in the world is famous for his tiny chapter of a page and a half around 250500 words. Therefore, the word count of a novel is crucial if. Oct 04, 2017 the word count at big five publishers had a slightly narrower range. That contract depends on the genre, and your genre mandates a word count for your book.

General middle grade and upper middle grade book lengths came in higher than the norm seven of the ten books on the list were estimated to come in between 99,840348,160 words. Most agree that under 1,000 words would be rather short and that over 5,000 might be rather too long. 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. Oct 02, 2017 on a scale of one bad to ten excellent, chapter books rate their agents overall as an 8. A nonfiction book attractive to publishers of bestsellers starts at around 75,000 words. Personally, i recommend at least 10,000 words for nonfiction, unless you can do it justice in less. My current wip is young adult, so i compiled a somewhat random list of ya novels by debut authors and looked up the book s word count. This means your memoir will average between 150 and 265 pages. When i was a kid, books tended to have about seventy thousand words, and a table of contents that filled one page, so figure about 45k. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. I use the target average of 1,500 words per chapter. In his analysis, he found that with this genre and based on the set of books he picked as representative of it, average chapter length was 6,100 words. 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. From these numbers, we can establish some guidelines.

To give you a general idea of the average chapter length, the range is usually between 3,000 to 5,000 words. Nov 08, 2020 its average word count is 6023 words per chapter. Another recommendation by tom corsonknowles from tck publishing. A suitable boy, by vikram seth, 592,000 words, 19 chapter, average chapter length a totally insane 31,000 words. Since 2011, the average length of a bestseller has dropped steadily from year to year. Take a typical 250 word per page, 15 pages of good content contains around 3,750 words. Aug 23, 20 until i discovered ar book finder, a site that will give you the word count for almost all novels. On average, when writing a memoir should not exceed 90,000 words and that is a stretch when it comes to memoir word count. Most agree that less than 1,000 and more than 5,000 words in a chapter is a big no. I am not sure about the top and bottom margins but of course i want them to look good and go with the side margins. Average novel word counts are generally around 85,000 but they can range from 50,000 to 120,000.

I just popped into my office and pulled a few books off the shelf. Oct 18, 2017 to find out how long should a chapter be, we examined books from a wide variety of genres and eras. So, with all of this in mind, is there actually an average word count you. Ali, 9000 words is on the upper end of the chapter book spectrum. Theres a basic mg word count, but there are also a few different ranges. I also want the side margins to be maxed out to around 0. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. For fiction, i recommend 5,000 words or more for short stories.

If you write a novel that averages 3,000 words per chapter but, twothirds of the way through the book, you insert a 400 word chapter, it is likely to. Most publishers consider novel length as between 50,000 and 110,000 words. Feb 20, 2019 some people will let you know that 2,500 words is about average per chapter, while others will snort into their tea and let you know that it should be 5,000 words and not a drop less. Nov 08, 2020 in the seven to eightyearold age group, children begin to read chapter books on their own. The series has 147 unique povs and 1,379 total povs, including the prequel, new spring. The books are written from different points of view povs. Attempts were made to factcheck the word count, and some other sources vary on exact word count, but managed to agree within a 10% window. Nov, 2009 so many people today rely on the word count given by their software program, but when you go to print a physical book, the pages matter. Chapters in books for younger readers often err on the shorter side, while fantasy. Sep 17, 2020 while theres plenty of room for variety, the average chapter length for a book is between 2,000 and 5,000 words, with the sweet spot lying between 3,000 and 4,000 words. And it may already be shifting toward smaller word counts.

He also determined that 95% of all the chapters in this collection were less than 11,000 words. Here is what i found in order from least words to most words. Jul 12, 2020 heres the ideal word count for nonfiction books. Word count varied from 5,000 words to 40,000 words, with an average mean of 17,200 and a median word count of 8,500. We recommend memoirs be between 45,000 to 80,000 words in order to maintain intrigue and reduce intimidation. Most lower middle grade books fall somewhere in the 20,00045,000 word range, and the three in our list were 15,504, 26,128, 44,924 words respectively. Calculate book page count using word count for book design. Mar 06, 2009 ive looked at the word count of what ive edited so far and the bits i havent yet and its around 230,000 or 230k words or so and still falling as i edit although that is a word wordcount but still a novel starts at 40k words and often is less than 100k these days this seems massive that said while ironmaster is only a. Writing chapter books a look at the numbers hannah holt. Count up the total number of words on 10 random full lines from different places and divide by 10 to get the average words perline count the number of lines on each page to get the linesperpage check that the book actually starts on page 1 sometimes the stuff before it starts is counted then. Childrens book writers must adhere to strict industry standards for.

But remember, this is more of a guideline than a rule. Jun 27, 2019 middlegrade novels are generally 20,000 to 55,000 words. The total page count excluding appendices and index is 204 pages, thus about 93,000 words. The length of a young adult or ya book is measured in word count instead of page count. Every page of a 150,000 word novel must be riveting to hold reader interest. It should be enough to communicate your message effectively. Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. This varies by genre though thrillers for example might favour much shorter, sharper chapters, whereas epic.