How Many Words On A Book Page

How Many Pages Should My Volume Be?

It's a perennial question asked by writers of all genres. "How many pages should I write for my book?" often followed past "What exactly is a 'page' of writing anyway?"

What's in a Folio?

All volume publishers and book designers take a standard they get by to estimate page length. Some go by pages; others go past words.

1 rule of thumb is you can become lx percentage of a manuscript folio into 1 typeset page (said manuscript existence in 12-point type, double-spaced, preferably Times New Roman, with one-inch margins on an 8.v × 11-inch document).

Another rule of thumb is you tin get 250 to 300 words on a typeset page. This estimate will vary depending on the typeface, point size, and leading yous employ, equally well as the trim size or physical size of the page—typically, it refers to a trade paperback, which is a 6 × 9-inch trim. So, a 55,000-word manuscript is about 220 typeset pages, and a 100,000-word manuscript is about 400 typeset pages.

Both rules of thumb are imperfect, but nosotros've plant the "250–300 word per page" rule works better more often than the "threescore per centum per folio" rule.

How to Format Your Page

If yous use the industry standard of 12-point blazon, double-spaced, Times New Roman, one-inch margins, viii.v × 11 document, you'll make your editor and publisher happy, even in these days of modernistic engineering science. Formatting your page this mode will assistance your publisher decide ending page count no matter how they guess pages.

There are a few other industry standards yous might note when formatting your manuscript pages.

Left-align your type and keep the correct side ragged.
Single space afterward periods.
Indent paragraphs except for the opening paragraph of a chapter or section. (Set up your indention in your paragraph formatting; don't use the tab key.)
Begin new capacity on new pages about i-third of the folio downward from the top. Center the title.
Utilise a word from the title (or a very shortened title) and your last proper name in the header, along with the folio number.
Employ italics for emphasis; never underline and never utilize bold italics (unless your heading is in bold).
If yous adopt to utilize all caps for accent, think that you're shouting—no one likes to be shouted at all the time. Your editor may change your all caps to italics. Perchance you should do that before your editor sees the manuscript?
Center the octothorp (#)—which yous know as the hash sign, hashtag, number sign, or pound sign (it has several names that depend on context)—one blank line down from the end of your manuscript to signify the end of the document. You tin also type "The Terminate" if you like. Why? It'southward a holdover from printed manuscripts and screenplays to show at that place are no missing pages.

This isn't an industry standard, only it is helpful: If you know the publishing business firm's editorial style, employ information technology, especially for items like book and movie titles, numbers, and references. Editors don't await y'all to know editorial mode, but if you bear witness you do, you will make their jobs easier and better your chances of having your manuscript be accepted.

What'south the Best Page Length for a Book?

At that place are no hard-and-fast rules for the number of pages in a book. There are, all the same, some guidelines.

Novels are ofttimes betwixt forty,000 and 200,000 words. Subgenres vary. Children's books are 10,000 to 15,000. Mysteries and young adult books run between forty,000 and fourscore,000 words. Thrillers and epic fantasy often clock in at over 100,000 words.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America offers a less nebulous guideline for the coveted Nebula award: a short story is under vii,500 words; a novella is 17,500 to 39,999 words; a novel is 40,000 words or over.

Nonfiction books also vary tremendously in word count. Brusque and punchy books are 40,000 to 60,000 words, only many nonfiction books are lengthy: lxxx,000 words and up.

In all cases, you can find an writer who has successfully pushed the envelope one way or another. The best guideline you can follow is to make your book as long as it needs to be and no longer.

Too Many Pages?

There are some writers who merely don't know when to finish, of course. Some farthermost examples of long books include

Marienbad My Love past Mark Leach. This is supposedly the world's longest published novel at two.5 million words. You can read it online at marienbadmylove.com. (It's besides available through CreateSpace on Amazon at a mere 630 pages. How did they practise that? They made the trim size 8.5 × eleven.)

The Apathetic Story past Nigel Tomm. This book (in multiple volumes) is 3,277,227 words and is 7,312 pages, according to Mental Floss. Yous tin can find the volumes online, merely many are out of print. Notation: This is not a book, per se; it'due south art. Which is probably why information technology gets some terrible reviews.

What about more than readable tomes? The Harry Potter books contain approximately 1,084,170 words. The Lord of the Rings trilogy contains approximately 455,125 words. The Stand (uncut edition) by Stephen King contains approximately 471,485; the cut edition is about 150,000 fewer words.

While I'chiliad an gorging reader and enjoy long books—400 to 500 pages is fine past me—there is a tendency for shorter books, especially in nonfiction. Keep this in mind as you program and write. What if yous get besides long? You can e'er cutting words.

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