As a publisher who has laid out dozens of books for printing—a 50,000 word manuscript should end up somewhere between 180 and 220 pages. The typical book's words-per-page count tends to range between 225 and 275—an average of 250.

I just laid out a 65,000-word book and it ended up, with a couple pages of photos and a few pages of appendix, at 268 pages (the pages in the main body of the text are numbered up to 237).

The count depends on how dense the content is, the font and spacing, any images or graphics that may appear in the text, if there is a lot of front- or back-matter (intros, forwards, indexes in the case of nonfiction).

A manuscript that has a lot of dialogue (or poetry or lyrics) will take more pages than one that has no dialogue and long paragraphs. Contemporary books (and poetry, of course) tend to be designed with more white space. Also, books are getting shorter and publishers will open up the text and margins a bit to add pages and give a slender book a little extra heft.

(Self-publishing authors and the services that lay out their books have a tendency to crowd the pages to reduce the cost of production. Bad idea.)

Alternatively, a very long book, like one I ghosted for Random House (The Man on Mao's Right by Ji Chaozhu, 2008 at 125,000 words) without much dialogue, at 250 words per page would have yielded 500 pages. That's too big for most people to imagine finishing, so a turnoff. It's also more expensive to produce. Random House laid it out at about 325 words per page which yielded a book of about 385 pages.

Finally, the relationship between page count and the physical weight or thickness of a book depends on the paper and can vary quite a bit. I have a 142-page book that weighs almost as much as the 385-page book mentioned above, but is about a third the thickness.

Probably way more than anyone wants to know, but maybe some of this will be helpful to a few.

Yes it is.

not sure about the lady above. But 50,000–80,000 is considered a novel. How ever a book doesn’t have to be novel length. You can find many books online that are between 10,000–50,000 words.

if you are sitting there counting words rather than just focusing on your story. What you should be doing is just writing the story YOU want to write. You’ll find many company’s that will turn you down for the length but you will also find people who will accept it.

a good list of books that are barely 20,000 words. I believe Ernest Hemingway wrote a lot of books that were about that length. Also the famous Animal Farm book.

so you see it doesn’t really matter how long your book is. It depends how GOOD your book is.

The number of words per page in a 5.5x8.5 paperback book will depend on a variety of factors, including the typeface, font size, line spacing, and margins used in the book. As a general rule, you can expect a 5.5x8.5 paperback book with size 12 text to have around 250-300 words per page, depending on the specific formatting choices made.

It is important to note that the number of words per page can vary widely depending on the specific layout and design of the book. For example, a book with larger margins, more line spacing, or a more condensed typeface will have fewer words per page, while a book with smaller margins, less line spacing, or a more expanded typeface will have more words per page.

Ultimately, the best way to determine the number of words per page in your book is to use a word processing program to format a sample page and count the number of words. This will give you a more accurate estimate of the word count per page for your specific book.

Getting started with self-publishing can be a bit difficult but doesn’t have to be.

After publishing 200+ books on Amazon and running 120 million Amazon ads, I discovered the secret to getting books self-published easily and selling.

The key is to break down the steps into easy-to-follow bite-sized chunks as I lay out in my free self-publishing secrets checklist.

In book manufacturing, the US Trade 6x9 with 11.5 Garamond is considered the standard prototype for a book.

At that metric, you are looking at a word count of 250–300 words per page. If there is dialogue with a lot of back and forth between characters, it’ll be less. If the text is heavy exposition, it’ll be more. So we are looking at a very rough average as opposed to a firm metric.

If you are making the pages smaller and the text larger, then you are going to have a lower number of words per page. This might also result in an overly thick book that is uncomfortable to hold. If you have a long novel with a high word count, you can make the font smaller to squeeze it into fewer pages. But that could give a reader eye strain trying to read the novel, and make it harder to track the sentences as you read.

This is why typography is so important to book manufacturing. Make a mistake, and you can render a great story into something that is unpleasant to read because it physically stresses the person reading it.

Typically, we estimate word count at 250 per page for a letter-half paperback. But that’s only an initial rough estimate because there are many factors that go into this besides the type size.

The word count per page is also affected by the leading (line spacing), page margins, and particular typeface you use. To this last item, not all 12-point regular fonts are the same width. Some are tighter or more spacious than others. And likewise, the formatting of your pages will significantly affect the word count — subheads, bullet lists, dialogue, call-outs, and pull quotes all reduce the overall number of words on a page because they introduce more white space.

The simplest way to get an estimate for your particular situation is to set up a letter-half page in InDesign, Word, Pages, or whatever you’ll use. Set the parameters I listed above as you plan them, fill the page with text, and check the word count. Some apps let you insert dummy text automatically; otherwise, just copy a big article or something from online.

Last, I should mention that a type size of 12 would be slightly large for body text in a letter-half-size book. I’ve never gone above 11 or 11.5. An exception might be a chapter book for kids, but I’ve never typeset one of those. So, without knowing anything about your particular book, I recommend trying 11.5 to see if that looks better. The reason is, the relationship of the type size, leading, and width of the text block on the page all affect the ease of reading.

Thanks for the A2A — I hope this helps!

[Answered: How many words per page are usually in a 5.5x8.5 paperback book, when all of the interior text is a size 12?]

The two most common publishing size formats are 6″ x 9″ and 5″ x 8″. Taking the same text from a book which I am currently writing, I took one page and formatted to the first size and the word count was two-hundred and fifty five. The same text had to get nearly a second half-page deleted and what remained was 177 word. The latter size is what is most commonly used for novels. There are novels in the 6″ x 9″ format but that is mostly used for nonfiction.

If you do your math, based on the 13,000 words you requested, the page lengths would be 51 pages and 73. pages. There are other format sizes, depending on the nature of what you are writing, which are used as standards within the Publishing industry.

Rule of thumb is estimated word-count based on 250–300 words per page, which is based on a double-spaced typed manuscript on an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of white paper.

It is very highly suggested that you begin to write in that format before creating any final format. The double space allows for an easier read when you are editing your work, and you can place suggested changes on the blank lines using a different font color, if you cannot make a decision on what changes to make, until later. Also, if would benefit you to use a standard font and save all your work as text files. This will then allow you a fresh formatting to the book-size you desire, and the font you desire, and layout you desire, following a universal single-line change. Once everything is done, and perfected to your liking, you should only then begin to create a finished and printable book. From there, many companies that offer platforms, such as Amazon Kindle and Smashwords will have conversion for eBooks available.

I would suggest that if you want to see a finished eBook product, after you finalize your book, download and install a piece of software called Calibre, which you can see the finished eBook format for a number of different eBook readers.

Self-publish or traditionally publish?

Self-publishing:

You can self-publish a book of any word count because you choose what you publish. There’s no barrier to entry such as 60,000 words +. You choose how long your book is, upload it, and press submit.

In my experience of working on self-published books, shorter word counts are often better these days because readers have limited time available, busy lives, and a long TBR list. As such, self-published word counts have been dropping.

However, I’d suggest going with a word count that matches your genre and target readers’ expectations. If you’re writing an epic fantasy novel, 25k isn’t going to cut it. If you’re writing an entry-level business book, 25k is fine. Know your reader, know your genre, know your word counts.

Traditional publishing:

If you want a traditional publishing deal, you might find that the majority of publishers are unlikely to take on your book as they’re still generally looking for longer word counts than 25k. If you check out the word count of most traditionally published books these days, they’re often 45k to 85k.

Of course, you might find a publisher that is looking for a shorter book, but you would most likely limit your pool of publishers if your book is 25k. Again, it depend on the genre and target audience, and you’d need to do a lot of research into your genre and target readers to understand the right word and pitch to publishers accordingly.

In short, it’s about understanding what readers and publishers want.

By book do you mean novel or non-fiction? Novels in general are anything over 59k. Novel length depends a lot on genre. YA novels are rarely over 75k, historical novels go up to 120k, ditto speculative fiction. Mysteries really vary by sub-genre. Cozies rarely exceed 70k, while thrillers can go to 120k. Romances also vary from Harlequin types up to 75k and category romances (romantic suspense, historical romance, paranormal romance etc going up to 100k)

None of these rules are fixed. But an unpublished author is better off erring on the side of shorter. Even Stephen King, though he had some fame already, had to cut The Stand by 400 pages or around a 100k the first time it was published because it was deemed too big. The original Lord of the Rings was meant to be a single volume. The publisher insisted it be broken into 3 volumes.

I've heard some rumors that readers want shorter books these days. I personally still like large ones but then I also prefer real books to electronic or audio ones though I do have and use a Kindle account.

Non-fiction is another kettle of fish and I'm not really qualified to respond since I don't write it.

A 150 to 200 page novel will have between 50,000 and 80,000 words. If you have written 7,985 words of fiction, you’ve got a fairly decent length short story. (A novella is about 20,000 to 30,000 words.) If it’s non-fiction, you have a long article.

Word count is more important to publishers than page count, because, as you say, font size will make a difference to the apparent size of the finished book. You may wish to look at the Writer’s Digest website or get a subscription. Writer’s Digest is an exceedingly valuable resource to find out what publishers expect and to what extent to need to conform to their expectations in all ways, one of which is word count.

Hope this helps.

The 250-word page is a really low estimate that's generally used to calculate manuscript pages, not printed books.

For print books, a mass-market paperback runs around 300-350 words per page. A trade paperback (6"x9") (or hardcover) runs around 350-400 depending on typesetting. The only time you'd run to 250 per page is if you were trying to make a book look longer than it is. The more pages, the more expensive the printing is, so it behooves publishers to put more words on a page.

Also, at 50K words, that wouldn't be considered a "novel," at least by young adult/adult fiction standards. At that length, it's a novella.

A “bankruptcy” might be only a few pages—some of the most popular writers, like James Patterson, consider tiny chapters make a greater exciting examine. Or it may be twenty pages or extra.

For that remember, “pages” is an assumption too. A ebook’s formatting sets how many phrases are on a web page; you could even change the web page count number your self on an e-book any time you exchange your tool’s font setting.

If you have got a specific style of writing in mind, you could guess what number of pages a book has, and what number of phrases consistent with chapter, and so forth. But the actual measure is the wide variety of phrases.

Mishra,

• In my opinion, there is nothing called a good or bad book length.
• If a book is well written, any length will be readable by the audience, but if a book or the content is not well-written or poorly constructed, even a book with less number of pages will become a challenge to finish.
• Hence don't worry about the length and concentrate on the content.
• Worry about the content after you complete the draft.
• If your publisher/ editor feels that your draft is too long, you can always trim some content and can always add it back as appendix or bonus chapters in later editions.
• J.R.R.Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is a wonderfully written Novel and the bonus content is thankfully added as appendix pages at the end of the book, hence optional for readers to go through.
• R.K.Narayan, one of the legends of English writing in India, never wrote a novel spanning more than 200 pages, but still went on to captivate a large audience and also ensured that you get a feel of reading a Novel even in such short number of pages.

Chinese characters are surrounded by white space.

(A) Choose two or three full pages at random. Ignore punctuation.

Page 29: 學而時習之、不亦說乎。有朋自遠方來、不亦樂乎。人不知而不慍、不亦君子乎。(30 characters)

Page 157: 君子食無求飽，居無求安，敏於事而慎於言，就有道而正焉，可謂好學也已。(29 characters)

(B) Count up the total number of full pages: each half page counts as 1, less than half = 0.

(C) Pages * Characters = Total (“Good enough for government work”;-)

Let’s say the average count is 30 and you have 200 pages: As a rough estimate, your book contains 6000 characters (note that many Chinese mistakenly call them words; they are actually morphemes [minimally meaningful units* that can combine to form words).

The rough estimate is good enough for a ballpark figure. Your translator will presumably provide you with a more accurate count. Good luck!

*Some common characters are also freestanding words

For a paperback or hardcover novel, the recommended length is typically between 200 to 400 pages. This translates to roughly 50,000 to 100,000 words. On average, a novel page can comfortably fit about 250 to 300 words, depending on the font size and formatting. Keeping these guidelines in mind helps ensure your book is a manageable length for readers and fits industry standards. However, the story’s needs should ultimately dictate the length, so focus on telling a compelling narrative first and foremost.

Getting started with self-publishing can be a bit difficult but doesn’t have to be.

After publishing 200+ books on Amazon and running 120 million Amazon ads, I discovered the secret to getting books self-published easily and selling.

The key is to break down the steps into easy-to-follow bite-sized chunks as I lay out in my free self-publishing secrets checklist.

Well, that’s going to depend on quite a few things!

This copy of Hamilton, for example, is pretty thick! However, there really aren’t all that many words in it considering the amount of pictures:

On the other hand, some books, like the one I’m currently flying through, have nearly all words.

The amount of words in a hundred page book is also going to depend on the size of the typeface, not to mention the size of the pages themselves:

The margins also matter:

That second book, the Warren Report, has an incredible amount of words packed on each page.

So, you see, there are too many variables to accurately predict how many words are in a hundred-page book.

Oh, and yes, I was lucky enough to get the vinyl box set of the Hamilton soundtrack with that book…

It can be anywhere between 250–500 pages long.

How a book is measured in the publishing industry is by the word count—how many words there are in the book. The word count varies depending on the genre. Mystery and Romance books tend to be shorter for quicker reads, Fantasy books tend to be longer. (Fantasy books are, on average, the longest novels.) And these are all fiction book. Non-fiction books can be far more variable in their word counts, depending on the subject.

The number of pages will depend on the number of words, the font size chosen by the publisher, and the size format of the paperback book (4x6, 5x7, 6x9, etc.).

The front matter and back matter in a book are not usually included in the page count. So if you really want to know what the average is, go to your local library and open books to the last page of the narrative and note the page number. (Don’t do this at a book store as it causes problems for the bookseller.)

Under the definitions used by several awards, a story becomes a novel when it’s more than 40,000 words in length.

However, the old pulp magazines would sometimes advertise stories as “Full-length novel complete in this issue!” when they were as short as 20,000 words, which would be considered a novella now.

And if you want to sell a story as an adult novel nowadays, you need at least 60,000 words and probably 80,000.

Technically, to be a novel, a story must also have the right structure — a complete character arc for one or more characters, building to a climax and resolution of the story’s central conflict. Many people don’t worry about that, though.

A book can contain several novels, or none; a reference book might have half a million words, but it’s not a novel, while an omnibus might contain three or four complete novels. A certain number of words doesn’t turn a book into a novel; it turns a story into a novel.