Word count for chapter books

The kjv bible breakdown by books, chapters, verses and word counts. The hunger games has a word count of 99,750 and my utility calculates it at 98,916. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Although amazon stopped offering this for new books several years ago, the feature still remained for older books. The best thing that you can do is look over comparable books and try to judge word count by their size, average words page, and illustration content. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Hi, im a little confused about the word count for chapter books. Word counts of popular ya books as i started drafting my new wip a ya scifi thriller i began wondering what word count i should aim for. Shoot for a total word count of 90,000 words, which still leaves plenty of room for cutting down and editing. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. For the book hatchet, the actual word count is 41,672 and i give you 41,212. Some chapter book authors have chosen to lengthen each chapter book they write in a given series, with the idea that the readers comprehension ability and attention span will increase with every reading. I have found the website dogobooks to be the most useful place to check the word count of popular books for kids.

This 90,000 word guideline for how many words in a novel is just that, a guideline. Ali, 9000 words is on the upper end of the chapter book spectrum. This question about how to write early readers, easy chapter books, and chapters book on the blog comes from mary. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. Before you decide your average chapter length, its a good idea to think about the purpose behind dividing a book into chapters.

Word counts of the most popular books in the world. So should i stay with this word count, or try to bring the word count down. We are also going to look at how harry potter is comparable to other young adult novels in regards to word count. In todays market, most chapter books are about 15,00020,000 words.

Stephen king word count 112263 274,672 bag of bones 203,3 black house 252,270 blockade billy 15,917 carrie 60,718 cell 121,931 christine 193,602 cujo 121,150 cycle of the werewolf 15,955 desperation 195,011 doctor sleep. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. These numbers are pulled from the original languages using logos bible softwareyou can see how i did it below. T he indie author chris fox coined the term potato chip chapters for easilydigestible book chapters of. Use these numbers as a baseline for your writing goals. Chapter books span a wide audience and reading levels vary. Agent jennifer laughran gives the word count for books for beginning readers as 100 and 2,000 words, depending on reading level. The hobbit has more unique words and a higher unique word density than both the silmarillion and each volume in the lord of the rings. Head over to the master outline to see these word counts in play. Calculate book page count using the word count from your word document. Do agents represent cbs or is it best to approach editors. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. Even if you think you have a great early reader idea, it has to be a very precise fit for a publishers established vocabsentenceword count.

I used the lexham hebrew bible and the nestlealand novum testamentum graece for these word counts. Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. The average nonfiction book is about 50,000 to 75,000 words, which is about 153 to 230 ebook pages. 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. Though the average word count of a chapter is around 2,000 5,000 words, it all depends on your story. Middle grade is from 20,000 55,000, depending on the subject matter and age range, and the word count of these books has been trending up in recent years. When writing for the younger ages especially, every word must count. Realize it over the maximum word count for erotic, science fictionfantasy genre. The one im targeting would be the younger audience around ages 6 to 9. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. A breakdown of the total number of books, chapters verses and words found in the king james version of the holy bible. How to write early readers, easy chapter books, and chapter. For more information on word counts for childrens book, check out this post. And youve probably wondered how long some of your favourite stories are.

For example, if an author has to write a minimum or maximum amount of words for an article, essay, report, story, book, paper, you name it. And remember, keeping to word counts is important, but what makes or breaks your chances with a publisher is the quality of your manuscript. The authors had sold between 10 copies and 2 million copies of their chapter books. In this article, were going to look at how many words are in the harry potter series. Your best bet is to go to a good childrens bookstore and look at books like your own in terms of target audience. So childrens book manuscript chapter length is a big question that ive received many times about all sorts of childrens books that have chapters. This averages to about 22 to 23 chapters per novel, with the average chapter length around 4,280 words. Discover the sweet spot for your chapters word count in this post. I have a pb manuscript that im thinking of turning into a chapter book. A reasonable word count for a nonfiction book would be between 30,000 to 50,000 words. However, there is a wide range of acceptable word counts for nonfiction books.

Unfortunately, amazon recently removed that feature as well. You\re writing your first novel, and you know you must shoot for around 80 to 95 thousand words. Middlegrade novels are generally 20,000 to 55,000 words. A minimum count for a nonfiction ebook is about 10,000 words, as long as the content is solid. Writing chapter books a look at the numbers hannah holt. Mgs are usually around 2545k, even longer if its a fantasy. 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. As for nonfiction books, the standard bestsellers have word counts similar to adult novels. Do check your comparable titles recent debuts onlyto make sure your story falls in that range. Obviously, the examples under each category are above and below what is generally accepted.

For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. So that usually includes everything from chapter books, to middle grade, to young adult novels. How many chapters will you need before you reach your target word count. Each page contains about 34 lines, with an average word count of 11 words per line, thus 375 words per page. Also, the chapters are evenly divided into 3 titled parts. Im a little confused about the word count for chapter books.

Im not sure if im pushing the word count over, been trying cut back the word count. Many of these books are written in rhyme or in a simple singsong meter that is catchy and fun. It is feasible to count the number of words in a published chapter. The hunger games has 27 untitled chapters, and about 3700 words per chapter. Barbara seulings chapter book, oh no, its robert, dives right into the type of conflict the. Armed with these word counts, i now have a range of lengths that have been proven popular. As previously discussed, there are different requirements for both fiction and nonfiction genres. Of course, rules are made to be broken, especially in literature. What is a good way to get the word count of a kindle book. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. You wont get exact, but youre wondering whether 35k is reasonable, so you dont need exact. If yours is too short, restructure it and add more tightly written stuff. Unless you are a really gifted folklorist, i would not go down this road. 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 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. Wordcounter will help to make sure its word count reaches a specific requirement or stays within a certain limit. We thought you might find it interesting to also see some more facts and figures about the bibles 66 different books. For this reason, there really is no average word count within the range. Well, youll put the book down when you get to the end of this chapter, you. Since just comparing the number of unique words in a book does not take its length into account i decided to calculate the percentage of unique words of the whole text. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. Each genre and subgenre has its own word count range. Better to have solid, clear information than rambling to make a page count. These are basic learning books that creatively teach colors, numbers or simple, fun stories for bedtime.

Never pad your manuscript just to meet a word count guideline. Once you know what your book will be about, it\s time to start planning the structure of the story. We explain two easy methods to estimate your book s page count. But more than word count, its content and reading difficulty that will better define what you have. From a conference, paula sadler had given out a handout that said the word count could be between 5,000 to,000 words.

Excluding endnotes and index, the book has about 200 pages of text, which means its total word count is about 74,000 words. But its also true that most books of a certain type have word counts that fall within a fairly narrow range, and if a manuscript doesnt, then the author should think carefully about the length and make sure it needs to be that long. Do you want to publish a wide format book with inspiring quotes down the side margins. When i started writing three years ago, the mg word count i kept hearing was no more than 30,000 words. Writing towards a word count might not work for everybody, but having a rough goal in mind certainly helps me when im sketching out chapters and undertaking my first draft. If the publisher has a convincing argument for cutting a passage or two, the book will be shorter. King james version bible breakdown books, chapters.

Calculate book page count using word count for book design. There are plenty of books that purposefully play with the word counts of their chapters. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. And in that case, people always ask, you know, how long should my chapters be. Childrens fiction is so varied in terms of length, type, illustration.

As a nonfiction writer myself, i know this is tough. Once upon a time amazon offered text stats for a majority of their books, which included word count. The word count range for each age level is only a guideline. On a scale of one bad to ten excellent, chapter books rate their agents overall as an 8. From a conference, paula sadler had given out a handout that said the word. Word counts for childrens books i received a request awhile ago to do a post on word counts for different age categories in childrens lit. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. If youre a big reader then youve probably read a mixture of very short and very long books in your lifetime. The eight harry potter books have an impressive combined word count of over 1 million words. The actual word count for harry potter and the sorcerers stone is 78,792 and my utility calculates 77,876. I publish my books first on smashwords and then, after they pass vetting for the smashwords premium catalog, i publish them on amazon as well.

But because time sometimes slows down or speeds up when were engrossed in a. If it has areas that need further explanation the word count will go up. Smashwords gives a precise word count for each and every b. Search for word count totals in books word counters. When writing a longer book that is aimed at 12yearolds and could maybe be considered tween, using the term upper middle grade is advisable.