To demonstrate what i mean i will use following book. Two of them came up as slightly above 2,000 unique words out of 10k and 16k words in total and one came up as 3,000 26k total. So far, i have about 35,000 words typed for the book i plan to publish. Most young adult novels fall between 55,000 and 70,000 words. In outlining your book in 3 easy steps, editor shawn coyne says, the average novel today is about 90,000 words. However, i understand that the length of twilight is unusually long for a debut novel. The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Once you have a vision for your booksmall, standard, or wide formatyou can move on to the second step in deciding how many words you should write. Any book needs to be, at minimum, 200 to 250 pages, to be taken seriously by publishers or. Publishers can now include it in the look inside, but a good rule of thumb is 10 words per line x 33 lines per page times number of pages. We have compiled a list of the daily word counts of famous authors and what they had to say about writing every day.
A rough estimate of the word count in the latter two categories is ten million words. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Word count, with a little help from amazon alexis grant. The average book on the planet is 65,000 words at 200 pages, which is pretty close to this method. The book with the least total number of words is sorcerers stones, while the book with the most words is order of the phoenix.
The figure was found through looking at a number of books text stats, until brave new worlds 64,531 word count landed in the exact center of all books50% of books have fewer words and 50% of books have more words. To save the time and effort of counting wordbyword, often a rule of thumb for the average number of words per line was used, such as 10 words per line. Be aware that the word average means that for every book that sells 15,000, there is one that sells 5,000. I was scared that agents would reject my book simply because i had got the length wrong. The total page count excluding appendices and index is 204 pages, thus about 93,000 words. I used the scanner class to scan each word in the document and put in an string arraylist. Harry potter and the sorcerers stone is about 77,500 words total.
Text file alice beginning of it alices adventures in wonderland. May 29, 2014 that left me with 66 logos word lists, each giving me every originallanguage word in a given book of the bible. This is a count of the total words not just number of uniques. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. We have compiled a list of the daily word counts of famous authors and what they had to say about writing every day what is a word count. By most peoples standards, 40,000 words would be pretty short for a novel. For most publishers, a book is novellength when its between 50,000 and 110,000 words. Having just finished a book, i can tell you that a 100page biography would be way too short to be publishable, these days, especially if youre a newcomer.
A novelist of my acquaintance insists that the only way to estimate the number of words in a book is to multiply the number of pages by 250. Python word count filter out punctuation, dictionary. It may be an ebook only not printed and designed as a reference tool for busy business people. Word counter is a free tool that provides detailed statistics about the character count, number of words, characters without spaces and so on. If you have questions about specific series of books, do some research read the books, check the catalogue, contact the publisher, etc. A key issue is the fact that picture books are 32 pages.
If you used wictionarys tv and movie script frequency list to study english, for example, television would be the 1,873rd word youd learn, knife the 1,980th, and manhunt the 18,573rd. How to calculate a word count per page pen and the pad. In north america, the standard used by editorial staff in figuring word count is 250 words per page, 10 words per line using a 12 pt. This tool also reports the number of syllables, monosyllabic words, polysyllabic words, sentences, paragraphs, unique words, short words, long words. Only 2 of the 7 harry potter books came in at under 100,000 words sorcerers stones and chamber of secrets which happened to be the first two books in the series. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price for the translation job. Hey guys, what is the best way to count words and unique words in epubazw3 files.
It has fewer words than the other six books, making it the shortest book in the series. At age five, a child will recognize about 10,000 words. Average the count by taking the total number of words counted and divide by three. Feb 18, 2008 the 250 words perpage rule is a copysetting estimate. Happily, we do not have a merit based vocabulary, and words that are useless have the same rights of inclusion as do those that are useful. For those who like to keep track of their reading word count or those who want to encourage their kids to read more the harry potter books series is an. For example, hyperion chapter book manuscripts must currently be 2,5005,000 words maximum. But i wanted all the words of the bible in a spreadsheet, so i had to take it a step further. If the word count of twilight is disregarded, the average.
Many of these books are written in rhyme or in a simple singsong meter that is catchy and fun. However, as a very rough and general guide the average novel length is about 80100,000 words of which about 510,000 words would be unique and differentiated. The daily word counts of 39 famous authors writers write. These are basic learning books that creatively teach colors, numbers or simple, fun stories for bedtime. According to lexicographer and dictionary expert susie dent, the average active vocabulary of an adult english speaker is around 20,000 words, while his passive vocabulary is around 40,000 words. According to amazons great text stats feature, the median length for all books is about 64,000 words.
However, after you learn the most common words, frequency lists. But i was wondering if there was any way to get a handle on the number of different words used in different works of fiction. Jun 27, 2019 a story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and. Knowing how many words in a novel is the first step toward writing a book. Word count tool is a word counter that provides an extensive statistics about the word count, character count, the number of characters without spaces. More important is whether or not your book reads like a picture book succinct, musical, pictorial. But the point was that knowing 8000 words, you can read and understand a novel, not that 8000 words are all in a single novel. Generally, there are 300 words per typed doublespaced page, using a 12 point font. Id like to know how many different words there is in an average book. Since this was the first book, rowling had more time to edit the book and make the writing more concise. Aug 05, 2019 writers digest recommends 80,000 to 89,999 words as a 100% safe range for literary, mainstream, womens, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror. Jun 24, 2019 be aware that the word average means that for every book that sells 15,000, there is one that sells 5,000.
How many words do you need to know in a foreign language. This is almost impossible to answer with any degree of accuracy as it depends on so many variables. Nonfiction wordcounts sit between 70,000120,000 words. To save the time and effort of counting wordbyword, often a rule of thumb for the average number of words per line was used. May 11, 2009 for a printed book, 37,000 words is definitely on the short side less than 150 pages so publishers may not be interested as pricing will be low and volumes needing to be correspondingly high.
May 07, 2018 right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. Generally, 50,000 would be considered the minimum word count, and ideally a novel should be over 70,000 words. Pick 10 lines on a page that appear to contain the most number of words. We could print flash cards, see which words occur most, and more. Return to writing for children printmobilefriendly version. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. The average wordcount for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. I know of an author with a very large publisher whose novel has sold only 1,087 copies in its lifetime. For childrens fiction, the general rule is the younger the audience the shorter the book, and for ya novels the average is 50,000 70,000 words. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. I found this site where it gives you a bunch of stats about your writing including the number of unique words. The first book, harry potter and the sorcerers stone, has 76,944 words.
You may also pick the lines from random pages in the document. The calculator counts number of unique words in a given text. Right now, when it comes to novellength word count, its all about 90,000 words. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. So now im trying to figure out how many words i might know. For a printed book, 37,000 words is definitely on the short side less than 150 pages so publishers may not be interested as pricing will be low and volumes needing to be correspondingly high. Tim, i once read somewhere, i dont remember where, that something like 98% of a novel is made up of less than 8000 words, if im not mistaken. Specifically, the words you should start learning are the words youll most commonly encounter.
The publication gave the following insights in its manuscript. An example of a book which started small and went way bigger, is write. The average number of words in an essay that is why we are so attentive to the application process and employ only those writers who can produce great essays and other kinds of the average number of words in an essay written assignments. Or how to count the number of unique words altogether. Of course the number of books 66 and chapters 1,189 are fairly easy to count. Discover the average number of words on a page by counting the number of words on three randomly picked full pages distributed throughout the book. This should capture the authors writing style and provide a reliable estimate of the number of words used by the. The part of the back or backbone between the shoulder blades and the loins which an animal cannot reach to scratch oxford english dictionary this lovely word is not often found. The 250wordsperpage rule is a copysetting estimate. But i also know of others who have sold over 500,000 copies.
The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. I worked for a small trade publisher in suburban chicago. First i had to get rid of the punctuation in all of the words. Book, author, year, unique words, words, words per unique word. The authors originally planned it to be 50,000 words, then went to 60,000 and eventually ended up at 80,000 words. Say, for example an average book written by michael crichton. Then i added the words from a single book of the bible. That was the formula in the good old days when courier was the only typeface and typewriters were king.
Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. On the upper end, a novel over 110,000 words is considered an epic. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. There are 884,421 total words in shakespeares 43 works. Also, heres another list i may swipe and add in here. Thats approximately 300 pages of doublespaced type. Multiply the average number of words per line by the number of lines on a full page. It is also unlikely to be understood by some portion of the people with whom you use it, and so cannot be said to aid in communication. It contains 38 lines per page, with an average of 12 words per line, thus 456 words per book page. About how many words of that size are in your average 250 300 page book. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. The novel that im writing is at 53,000 words and i was trying to figure out how many words is average for a book of my genre.
Romance is a unique genre because the plot is all about two. I have just realised i did not explain myself correctly i wanted to find not only the total number of unique words which i understand is the length of the set but also the number of times each individual word was used, e. These rules have fallen by the wayside in the word processing era. Though, my unique word count might be fluffed a little bit because its a hard sci fi and i discuss serial numbers and a lot of other technical jargon which are counted as unique words. Now we have computers and word processing software. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures. What isn\t often considered is the sheer number of words a person who reads the entire series consumes. You can use word to count how many words you have written in a document. Words counts of bestselling novels better novel project.
Iirc, the king james bible has something like 1 or 12000 distinct words. That is saying a page with 12point font and double spaced with 1inch margins all around will average about 250 words, which were averaged at i believe 5 letters per word. However, it will be on the short side, as the average length of a novel hovers around 50,00070,000 words. The top 100 most frequently occuring words make up 53. Mind you that great classic, the little prince, was such a work. Add these rare and uncommon words to your vocabulary now. But what about the average number of words per age group. Thats the level where publishers may suggest dividing a story into multiple volumes. 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.
And for every book that sells 20,000, there is one that is a disaster. The top 10 most frequently occuring words make up 21. The harry potter books are popular, and once someone reads the first book in the series, they often end up reading the entire series. Lewis the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, roald dahls charlie and the chocolate factory. Most ebooks i see are double spaced, which makes their pages clearer but also reduces the number of words per page. How many words on average is a biography comprised of. I have to count the number of unique words from a text document using java. How many words are there in the harry potter book series. Divide the result by 10 to find the average number of words per line.
The quality of all custom papers written by our team is important the average number of words in an essay to us. A story that is over 40,000 words is generally considered a novel. Shakespeare text statistics open source shakespeare. In terms of actual word usage, the reading teachers book of lists claims that. No more than 90,000 words seems to be the editors mantra these days. Virtually every book i try to shop by a debut author thats any longer than thatregardless of categoryreceives the same response from editors. For example when it comes to verses i have read and heard preachers and teachers say there are 31,000 verses, 31,101 verses, 31,102 verses, 31,170 verses and. Jul 01, 2015 it may be an e book only not printed and designed as a reference tool for busy business people. There are 28,829 unique word forms, and 12,493 occur only once. Those remaining 2% is a huge number of new words considering the overall number of words in a novel, if i were to know only that 8000 words. I used the scanner class to scan each word in the document and put in an string arraylist so, the next step is where im having the problem. Books range from several words to several thousand compare goodnight moon to the polar express. At a writers conference i recently attended, publishing veteran jane friedman said 80,000 words is good for most fiction, below 60,000 isnt novel length territory, and above 120,000 is likely too much. However when it comes to verses, words and letters, there are a wide variety of numbers floating around.