Word count for ya books

The hunger games is more of a ya dystopia than a ya fantasy but i included it for interests sake. There are several methods for determining the word count of a given book. The average mean word count was about 73,000 words. Your best bet is to go to a good childrens bookstore and look at books like your own in terms of target audience. Lets start with middle grade since thats what i write. Although amazon stopped offering this for new books several years ago, the feature still remained for older books. That said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally lies between 100,000 and 115,000. The problem im having is that im thinking its to long. This video is all about word counts for your novel, in particular word counts for ya novels. If youve read our related article on how many words are in a novel youll recall that the typical word count for a novel according to is 80,000 to 109,000 words. Perhaps more than any other, ya is the one category where word count is very flexible. What is a good way to get the word count of a kindle book. Multiply up by the number of pages and get to a rough word count.

The harry potter books are young adult titles, and ya publishers generally look for manuscripts in the 50,000 to 80,000 word range. The highest word count was 115,000, the lowest was 47,000, and the average was 75,000. Smashwords gives a precise word count for each and every b. But ebooks dont have printing costs, and you cant tell at a glance how long they are. Lockhart is 50k, if i stay by gayle forman is 49,6k, artemis fowl, by eoin colfer is 56,7k but it seems these days books tend to be longer. 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. Flash point by brooke blaine, criminal pleasures by darien cox, velocity by kristin mccloy, falling from the. My upperlevel ya novel is 211 pages, 61,078 words, tnr 12 pt. From picture books to ya information to get you started at. What is the ideal word count for a nonfiction book in the.

We analyzed the nyt bestsellers to see what the optimal length and word count is. Ya manuscripts can have a word count anywhere from 55k to 90k. Word count for young adult books the word count range for young adult is 55,000 to 90,000. Your guide to book word counts fiction and nonfiction. Young adult books range between 60,000 and 90,000 words. What word counts are a red flag for agents and will get. That gives us a rough range of 61,00089,000 words, with about 3 out of 4 queried ya books falling into that range. Below are several different ya series, their word counts per book and total word counts for the entire series. This years best of the best new ya books include ubiquitous mustreads, unexpected gems from beloved authors, fantasies both insistently fresh and in the mode of timeless classics, and addictive contemporaries with stellar voice and huge heart. Only word counts are below, not page counts, as some novels vary between editions.

Shorter novels such as fahrenheit 451, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the great gatsby, and slaughterhousefive are between 4050,000 words. The word count range for young adult is 55,000 to 90,000. The most important thing here is to realize that there are always exceptions to these rules. Unfortunately, amazon recently removed that feature as well. Like a general fiction novel, a good target word count for a memoir is 80,000 words. But for mainstream ya it is always best to stick to under 80k. What about the accepted minimum on middlegrade books. Try not to completely tether yourself to word counts. The key differences between middle grade vs young adult. The longest is the order of the phoenix with a word count of 257,000 words. Click librarian or teacher and then search for books like yours click on the titles to get all kinds of info about them, including wordcount. How to find out the number of words in a book pen and.

For more ya examples, including more dystopias, check out this list on brett orrs site. There are exceptions, like ya books that exceed 250,000 words, but those tend to be outliers, and firsttime authors rarely, if ever, get to be an outlier. At the end of this article, youre going to find a guide to suggested word count length for most every popular genre. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Rowlings recordbreaking series began with two titles on the high end of that spectrum and finished with five that left the guidelines in the dust. Her picture books the diamond and the boy and a father. As you may know, i am currently revising my wip the last queen, and i have been struggling with a high word count. With books like twilight at 118,975 words and divergent at 105,143 words, this genre has been. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. With books like twilight at 118,975 words and divergent at 105,143 words, this genre has been trending higher. Which is totally understandable, since length can be an important factor that agents and publishers look at when they receive your query letter. A standard book trim size is the most costeffective to print, and some printers only print certain sizes of books. Well, while the accelerated reader program is lame in a lot of ways, this is a very handy tool.

Neither too long nor too short, this book length signals a novelists competency and knowledge of the publishing market to prospective agents and editors. I like that theres a comment about minimum word count for ya. My own past research on ya word count turned up 5080,000 as an average guideline. Deconstructing five spooky picture books with spoilers and word counts. Search for word count totals in books word counters. 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. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds usually in words per minute. The golden compass by philip pullman 112,815 words, prisoner of azkaban by jk rowling 106,821 words, and enders game by orson scott card 100,609 words.

Counting chickens a few words about word counts at hope vestergaards site. No, actually, as everyone can see ya has a lot of flexibility towards word count, but it tends to be higher rather than lower. And man, people love to point out exceptionsand they always will. Generally a 50,000word novel would be the minimum word count. I keep hearing that houses are looking for books around 200 pages long. Word count for novels and books is something i dont think about too often until i travel to a writers conference, and then someone asks a simple, innocent question. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. Although the median word count of those novels was 73,000 right around where conventional wisdom would suggest the existence of. At times the readers of books may be interested in discovering how many words they read. This is due in large part to the variety of subgenres within it and the trend for a book series with an ever greater word count. This survey was open from may 24th to september 15th, 2017. It mattered a lot in print books, where a book that was too short or too long would be rejected for printing and visual reasons. These include using published information about the book to determine an exact word count, estimating the number of words based on industry standards and.

There is no question that part of that growth is due to the harry potter effect. Rather than sticking too rigidly to word count, its best to strive for a manuscript in which the function and the format work together. There are always exceptions, of course we were liars by e. My point is that your genre will likely dictate your word count. Search the worlds most comprehensive index of fulltext books. Word count picture book, middle grade, ya lisa lewis tyre. You can see there is a lot of variation in word length, especially in epic high fantasy, where books can stretch beyond 200,000 words or sink as low as 50,000. Picture book word count, and other rules that are meant to. List of popular ya novels word counts if youre like me, you obsess over the word count of your novel.

Chapter books would be on the lower end, while upper middle grade would be fine in the upper range. Once upon a time amazon offered text stats for a majority of their books, which included word count. For young adult fiction, the word count is once again lower, with the ideal being 55,000 80,000 words. Towards the bottom, i also checked the ongoing epic fantasy series, a song of ice and fire and the original lord of the rings trilogy. There are exceptions, like ya books that exceed 250,000 words, but those tend to. Most young adult novels fall between 50,000 and 80,000 words. As the young adult book category has grown over the last couple of decades, so has the page count in those books.

For novels specifically in the young adult genre, the typical range is between 55,000 79,999 words. Childrens fiction is so varied in terms of length, type, illustration. But while books of all sizes have cracked the list at one point or another, the vast majority of. This is the most comprehensive explanation on word count for different types of manuscripts that ive ever come across. Is 109,000 words to long for a ya adult fantasy novel. Younger still, middle grade fiction ages 912 should. There are a number of factors deciding the word count, topmost being what sort of book it is. Pencilthin books on narrow topics that are under 50,000 words are quite common. How many words does it take to write a young adult book.

Also remember because there are a bunch of new novel imprints opening their doors, a novella is 40k or less. When it gets closer to 1,000, editors and agents may shy away. Literary agent paula munier says a 90,000 word count is the sweet spot for debut fiction. Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for english. To find pretty much any kids ya word count, you can use the ar bookfinder. Middle grade word count is typically 20,000 to 55,000. Books for the middleschool audience tend to be divided between the mg and ya shelves. With that in mind, ive tried to put together the definitive post on word count for fiction novels, young adult, middle grade, childrens books and even memoir.

Word count for novels and childrens books at the guide to literary agents blog. That said, this figure differs from book to book and organization to. But i cant edit any more out otherwise the story line is going to be way to fast paced or important plot threads are going to be. I always read its okay for the word count to go a little higher when it comes to ya fantasy. According to chuck sambuchino see below for word count. I wrote the first draft of this ya epic fantasy novel without really thinking of its length i just wrote the. 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. Writing for young adults a look at the numbers hannah holt.