Average fantasy book word count

How many trade childrens book have you sold with or. We recommend memoirs be between 45,000 to 80,000 words in order to maintain intrigue and reduce intimidation. Feb 09, 2015 below are several different ya series, their word counts per book and total word counts for the entire series. Most middle grade novels are between 40,000 and 69,000 words long. Jul 18, 20 whats the average chapter length in fantasy novels. Yes, having a book that is overly short or overly long for its genre will incrementally decrease your odds of finding traditional publication. May 14, 2018 literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. Coyne uses the nanowrimo wordcount length of 50,000 words for his examples, calling 50,000 words a good foundation to build upon. The binding, font and paper size establish how many pages a published book will be.

Jul 24, 2009 my upperlevel ya novel is 211 pages, 61,078 words, tnr 12 pt. Use these numbers as a baseline for your writing goals. I found some disagreement about the ideal length of mystery novels. Minimum realistic word count of nonfiction book writing. The golden compass by philip pullman 112,815 words, prisoner of azkaban by jk rowling 106,821 words, and enders game by orson scott card 100,609 words. Longer word counts allowed for fantasy, scifi, paranormal, historical. Sep 18, 2017 the highest word count was 115,000, the lowest was 47,000, and the average was 75,000. That gives us a rough range of 61,00089,000 words, with about 3 out of 4 queried ya books falling into that range.

If this thread still going can someone tell me how many words is reasonable for a chapter im writing my first fantasy novel and worried if i have too short or to long of a chapter right now my first chapter word count is at 1,436 and in counting. Page count is determined by the publisher, not the writer. I think the quality of their writing outweighed the word count issue. 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. Generally a 50,000word novel would be the minimum word count. In other words, you must be scrupulous about editing every sentence for length. However if youre curious to see what the average word count is for standard genres, check out the breakdown in the article. Having some reallife examples at your side, you should get a better sense of. As an indie author, you always have the freedom to play with word count, to modify, expand, compress, and assess what works best. Jun 15, 2017 this is a general list of age categories and word counts for childrens books. But at the end of the day, you have to write the novel you want to write. 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. You know this, i know this, and ive done my damndest to cut it i shaved 12k off in the past two weeks. I have often looked this up and got different results, which makes it very confusing.

If youre writing a young adult fantasy novel, you should keep your word count below 90,000 words or 300 book pages. Writing middle grade a look at the numbers hannah holt. Towards the bottom, i also checked the ongoing epic fantasy series, a song of ice and fire and the original lord of the rings trilogy. Analyzing chapter lengths in fantasy fiction creativity hacker. Know your content, know your mainline pitch and some possible permutations, create a highlevel outline, write a compelling chapter and sell that. The editor also provides four popular trim sizes for formatting 4. 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. Failing to mention the word count, or committing the faux pas of stating the page count instead, will also see a quick rejection. Oct 26, 2018 if you want to experiment with book sizes and the way they might impact your typesetting choices, the reedsy book editor allows you to do so for free. The word count at big five publishers had a slightly narrower range. Everything you need to know about novel word counts nathan. Longer word counts allowed for fantasy, scifi, historical. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words.

Each genre and subgenre has its own word count range. Also, heres another list i may swipe and add in here. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. Word count for novels and books is something i dont think about too often until i travel to a writers conference, and then someone asks a simple, innocent question. For example, atonement has a word count of 123,378 and my utility comes up with 110,765 words. Between 80,000 and 89,999 words is a good range you should be aiming for. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. Oct 23, 2017 writing for young adults a look at the numbers. Books in this genre are also often gag gifts or are meant to be facetious.

Do check your comparable titlesrecent debuts onlyto make sure your story falls in that range. Amazon ebook page length by genre kindle page length. They can be up to 180,000 words, or even over 200,000, but the novel must be wonderful and must fully justify its word count. For novels in general, the accepted word count is 7080,000 words. But note, all of those authors made big names for themselves. I would say again that reader expectations matter much more than industry rules. The rules for word count are nothing if not flexible, in both traditional and indie publishing. On average, when writing a memoir should not exceed 90,000 words and that is a stretch when it comes to memoir word count.

The average across a sample of 50 books in august 2015 showed 172 words per kindle edition normalized page. I have therefore made some averages, based on what ive heard from publishers and agents at childrens book events, and from research and reading. This article suggests that essentially, it should be as long as it needs to be, meaning dont look at the word count, just get the story out then edit. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. I would limit the book at 100,000 words to be safe. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. This post on fantasy authors handbook does point out that many of the bestselling books of all time of which many are fantasy novels are not the 200,000 word epics many associate with the genre. That said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally lies between 100,000 and 115,000.

There are a lot of books that fit nicely into this range, such as enders game with 100,609 words and. The average mean word count was about 73,000 words. During the introductory month of the new system, the conversion of kenpc into the actual number of words in the book actual word count showed significant differences from one book to the other. As a result, a 100k manuscript can size up very differently on a shelf. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books. Jun 27, 2019 fantasy and science fiction novels are known to be lengthier than other books. My own past research on ya word count turned up 5080,000 as an average guideline. Up to 6070k is probably safe though there are even longer exceptions. Oct 11, 2012 she is currently querying her epic fantasy novel heirs of war with a word count at 7k. Yes, you should go through the novel revision checklist and take out anything extraneous no matter what.

Jan 08, 2018 without extensive sales statistics its hard to say how the size of a book does or doesnt affect its popularity. With that in mind, ive tried to put together the definitive post on word count for fiction novels, young adult, middle grade, childrens. Aug 15, 2019 average word count for this book genre. If youre working on a novellength book, aim for 50,000 words at the very least but its better to aim for 90,000. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words.

The exceptions are usually authors whove already had an established track record of sales with previous shorter books, like george r. So itll be off on occasion, but it should get you relatively close for the average book. This is a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, womens, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job.

I know that this is considered long but i really cant cut anything, it is all integral to the story. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. Word counts for paranormal and urban fantasy thoughts on. The average mean word count was about 53,000 words. Aug 05, 2019 all of these are average book word count ranges and should not be taken as the definitive word count you must reach in your book. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid.

Anything in this word count wont scare off any agent anywhere. Jan 19, 20 so it shows, if the book is good enough, the word count doesnt matter. Sep 20, 2019 the average fantasy novel should have between 50,000 and 150,000 words. So if you want to write a big book, you better make sure every word is damn well worth it. This 90,000word guideline for how many words in a novel is just that, a guideline. Are you wondering what the word count for your book should be. Apr 05, 2015 generally a 50,000word novel would be the minimum word count. There are a lot of books that fit nicely into this range, such as enders game with 100,609 words and the martian with 104,588 words. Only word counts are below, not page counts, as some novels vary between editions. However, the true word count depends on the category in which youre writing. What occurred to me while reading was how the predetermined word counts make it more difficult to query a novel that crosses categories. Writing for young adults a look at the numbers hannah holt. Search for word count totals in books word counters.

Anything above 70k but less than 115k science fiction and fantasy tend to run up around 100k115k words. The title with the shortest chapters, on average, was whirlwind in the thorn tree, averaging just 2,900 words each. What is the recomended wordcount for a fantasyfiction book. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts. Standard word counts for books publishing with kindle. But again as a surprise to me, dune was a close second, averaging just 3,800 words per chapter.

Science fiction and fantasy novels typically have a word count between 90,000 to 125,000 words. Of course, rules are made to be broken, especially in literature. Many, yes, but there are exceptions due to the layout and font size of a particular book. This is due to the audience youre reaching preferring that length. My middle grade novel is complete at 250,000 words, and have five sequels planned which will each be approximately the same length. For fantasy novels, you are allowed to go slightly above this limit, but unless you are an established author, i dont recommend going too far above.