How Many Words in a Novel? Word Counts by Genre and Pages per Book
How many words in a novel? Average word counts by genre from Amazon bestseller data, how many pages that makes in print, and why pages are a poor measure.
Short answer
A novel has at least 40,000 words, and most adult novels run between 70,000 and 100,000.
- Bestselling fantasy averages around 109,000 words, romance and thrillers around 91,000, while nonfiction books usually land between 50,000 and 80,000 words.
Contents
How many words in a novel? At least 40,000, and in practice most adult novels land between 70,000 and 100,000 words. Genre makes a big difference: bestselling fantasy averages around 109,000 words, romance and thrillers around 91,000, and a typical nonfiction book runs 50,000 to 80,000 words. Below you will find the numbers by genre and age group, what they turn into on the printed page, and why we price our tools by words instead of pages.
Length categories: from flash fiction to novel
The boundaries differ slightly between organizations, but these are the commonly used ones:
| Category | Words |
|---|---|
| Flash fiction | under 1,000 |
| Short story | 1,000 to 7,500 |
| Novelette | 7,500 to 17,500 |
| Novella | 17,500 to 40,000 |
| Novel | over 40,000 |
The 40,000-word line comes from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, while NaNoWriMo set 50,000 words as its target. Kindlepreneur adds that you are "better off above 50,000 words" if you want readers to accept the book as a full novel.
Average word count by genre
Kindlepreneur took Amazon's top 100 bestsellers in each of 15 Kindle categories, removed outliers, box sets and omnibus editions, and averaged the rest. Reedsy publishes the ranges its editors recommend. Both side by side:
| Genre | Bestseller average (Kindlepreneur) | Recommended range (Reedsy) |
|---|---|---|
| Fantasy | 109,000 | 100,000 to 115,000 |
| Science fiction | 98,000 | 100,000 to 115,000 |
| Historical fiction | 102,000 | not listed |
| Horror | 102,000 | 70,000 to 100,000 |
| Literary fiction | 98,000 | 80,000 to 100,000 |
| Mystery, thriller, suspense | 91,000 | 80,000 to 100,000 |
| Romance | 91,000 | 80,000 to 100,000 |
| Crime fiction | 89,000 | not listed |
| Memoir | not listed | 80,000 to 90,000 |
| Nonfiction | 50,000 to 75,000 | 50,000 to 80,000 |
The ranges behind the averages are wide. Kindlepreneur found romance bestsellers from 19,000 to 194,000 words, so the average tells you what readers are used to, not what is allowed.
Children's and young adult books
| Category | Words (Kindlepreneur) | Words (Reedsy) |
|---|---|---|
| Young adult | 45,000+, ideally under 80,000 | 55,000 to 80,000 |
| Middle grade | 22,000 to about 60,000 | 20,000 to 55,000 |
| First chapter books | 5,000 to about 20,000 | not listed |
| Picture books | 250 to 750 | not listed |
| Board books | 25 to 200 | not listed |
From words to pages: what the print book will look like
There is no fixed number of words per page. Kindlepreneur gives 250 to 300 words per page for a typical novel. To see how much trim size and font change that, we typeset the full text of Pride and Prejudice (about 121,600 words, 61 chapters) ourselves at 11 point with 1.3 line spacing, every chapter starting on a new page, margins of 0.75 in inside and 0.6 in outside:
| Trim size | Garamond 11 pt | Palatino 11 pt |
|---|---|---|
| 5 x 8 in | 262 words per page, 464 pages | 234 words per page, 520 pages |
| 5.5 x 8.5 in | 318 words per page, 383 pages | 285 words per page, 427 pages |
| 6 x 9 in | 366 words per page, 332 pages | 333 words per page, 365 pages |
The same manuscript ranges from 332 to 520 pages, a difference of 57 percent. Larger fonts, more generous margins, lots of dialogue or scene breaks push the page count further up. Front matter, a table of contents and an author bio add a few pages on top.
As a rule of thumb from these numbers:
| Words | 5 x 8 in | 6 x 9 in |
|---|---|---|
| 30,000 | 115 to 128 pages | 82 to 90 pages |
| 60,000 | 229 to 256 pages | 164 to 180 pages |
| 100,000 | 382 to 427 pages | 273 to 300 pages |
For your own manuscript, the free words to pages estimator does this calculation for your trim size and font. Page count also drives your spine width and printing cost, so it is worth checking before you design a cover.
Why we price by words, not pages
The table above is the reason. A page is not a unit of text until the book is typeset: it depends on trim size, font, font size, line spacing and margins. If we priced editing or writing by pages, the same manuscript would cost over 50 percent more just because you chose a 5 x 8 format and Palatino. Words do not change when you change the layout.
That is why every Bookfairy tool that works on your text uses fixed tiers by word count:
| Tier | Words | Write a book | Editing |
|---|---|---|---|
| S | up to 30,000 | $58.80490 tokens | $46.80390 tokens |
| M | up to 60,000 | $82.80690 tokens | $82.80690 tokens |
| L | up to 100,000 | $106.80890 tokens | $118.80990 tokens |
For editing and typesetting, the tier is set automatically from the counted words of your uploaded manuscript. When you write a book with us, you choose the tier up front and the generator stays within it. Before you pay anything, a free account shows you the outline and the complete first chapter, or the first 3,000 words of your manuscript fully edited. All prices are on the pricing page.
Measured against the genre table: most adult genre averages fit into tier L, novellas and many nonfiction books into S or M. Our largest tier ends at 100,000 words, which is below the bestseller averages for fantasy (109,000) and for historical fiction and horror (102,000 each).
How to pick a target length for your book
- Look at your direct competition. Take five recent bestsellers in your exact subcategory and check their page counts and trim sizes. That tells you more than any genre average.
- Decide on the trim size early. It sets how many pages your word count becomes, and that drives the print cost per copy.
- For a series, keep lengths consistent. Readers notice when book three is half as long as book one.
- For nonfiction, write until the promise of the title is kept. A focused 40,000-word guide beats a padded 80,000-word one.
Once you know the length, the typesetting tool shows you the first ten pages of your manuscript in the layout you pick, so you can see real words per page instead of estimates.
Frequently asked
How many words is a 300-page book?
Anywhere from about 70,000 to 110,000 words. In our test typesetting a 6 x 9 inch page held 333 to 366 words and a 5 x 8 inch page 234 to 262 words, depending on the font. Trim size and typeface matter more than most authors expect.
Is 50,000 words enough for a novel?
Yes, it qualifies. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America count anything over 40,000 words as a novel, and NaNoWriMo used 50,000 as its goal. For adult genre fiction, readers are used to more: most of Kindlepreneur's bestseller averages by genre sit between about 89,000 and 109,000 words.
How many words is a novella?
Roughly 17,500 to 40,000 words. Below that you are in novelette territory (7,500 to 17,500) or writing a short story.
How many words are on a page of a book?
Kindlepreneur gives 250 to 300 words per page for a typical novel. Our own test typesetting at 11 point ranged from 234 words on a 5 x 8 inch page to 366 words on a 6 x 9 inch page.