Words per page and other questions. I need help.

250 words per page is the usual rule of thumb. Not sure what your second question means. Do you lose pages to editors? How?

Words per page in a published/printed book vary according to font, font size, and paper size. Anywhere around 300, or more, depending on the type of book. It has little to do with the standard word-count-by-page, which is based on a raw manuscript in Word with 12pt double-spaced Courier New and 1-inch margins, letter size (which has little to do with Word's word count, because it is a pre-computer age fossilized measure).

As for how many pages you would "lose" -- hell, who knows. As many as might make the stuff fit in the size of book the editor wants to put out, depending on font etc....

Wayne it's a hard question to answer; the 250 words a page is the standard for a ms. in Courier, for instance.

The process of determining how many ms. pages the printed book will have is a black art, called casting off. It's vaguely mysterious since it's not cut-and-dried mathematics. It depends on the typesetting and the writing style of the author.

As to how much is cut, that depends on the author. Some have really really clean copy and there's not much editing, copyediting or proofing to do.

Others can lose 20% or so.

Sometimes too you get a ms. that you look at say "This is really two books. "

Wayne K said:

When a book goes to bookstores, how many words per page is there generally?

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1. Go to bookstore.

2. Select some books.

3. Count words on typical pages.

4. Repeat as necessary.

caw

I don't think there really is an average for published novel pages. Some houses print more words per page in a smaller font in order to give the novel fewer pages (most of my Ace paperbacks are like this). Other houses (HQN, for example) have somewhat larger font, fewer words per page, and are thicker books.

As for losing words, over the course of edits, I actually added about 2400 words to the final manuscript.

If you are talking about a four inch by six inch pocket book, 250 words per page would be unusual for an adult (i.e., not a children's) book and would look large.

My copy of War and Peace is about 500 words per page. That's about the upper limit for a pocket book. Harlequin Romances are about 300 words per page.

If it's a bigger book, a trade paperback or a hardcover, you can easily get more. I have the complete novels of Jane Austen in one volume; that's probably about 1500 words per page. But a more normal number for a long, large book would be around 750 words per page.

Editors sometimes cut a lot; sometimes they ask for more. I don't think you can generalize this at all. Some houses have target lengths for a particular line, but more often they will cut stuff they think is unnecessary or ask for stuff they think would improve the book.

After the edits recommended by my editor, my novel was about 6000 words longer.

There's no point in counting pages at the manuscript stage; you should be thinking word count.

Rachelle Gardner has some good stuff on word count, which seems to me to reflect current US publishing practices pretty well.

As an editor, I think that most new writers generally have 10 to 20 percent excess that could be cut out. But everyone is different.

One way to estimate the number of words on a book page is to check Amazon, though the the info isn't there for all books. Scroll down, and under the "Product Details" section you'll see the number of pages in the book. Further down, (but again, not for all books) if you look under the "Inside this Book" Section, you'll see a little link called "Text Stats." Click on it, and it'll tell you the number of words in the book (along with some other nifty info). If you really want to know the number of words per page, divide that total by the number of pages. I suspect, though, that what you really wanted was the total number of words in the first place...

Palmfrond said:

After the edits recommended by my editor, my novel was about 6000 words longer.

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For me: 15,000 longer. That takes into a account a few cuts too.

Ideally, and certainly for me, the editing experience isn't something the editor "does" to a manuscript. It's a collaboration, and a respectful one. He made suggestions; *I* made any cuts.

Let's make it clear that cutting isn't necessarily bad. Sometimes, cuts will improve a story, but as with everything else in the industry, that depends on the writer in question. Some, like me, tend to underwrite. After cutting worthless scenes and plumping up those that remain, my word counts tend to rise.