Word count

From our Nonfiction forum:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22176

Jenna's second post and step #1 mentions word count around 70,000. You may want to not only check out the rest of her great thread, but the other topics in the nonfiction forum.

I'm going to move this over to non-fiction. Good Luck!

Try this thread: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28590&highlight=nonfiction+length

It looks like a lot depends on the publisher and the subject! (Nonfiction isn't my area, so I apologize for not being able to nail down specifics.)

Sitting on my desk is a little hardbound book, maybe 4 inches by 6, and under 80 pages. What's that, probably ten thousand words, tops? I'm pretty sure its title will 'beep out' here, but it's "On B---S---" by Harry G. Frankfurt, and it's really very good.

I think the answer is, it all depends on what the publisher thinks it can sell and on whether the subject matter is thoroughly covered as appropriate for the intended audience.

Maryn, knowing this isn't really helpful but not sure generalities could be

If you have other space-eating goodies such as graphs, drawings, photos and such, you can probably get away with fewer words. Publishers of standard format books are concerned with page count as much, or more than, word count.

If I'm wrong, Lauri or someone else more knowledgeable than I will come along and slap me.

Hi there!
Word count doesn't always matter that much--from my perspective, you can tackle a subject thoroughly and well in 20,000 words, or you can butcher the whole thing and still not adequately cover it in 100,000.

I don't know what the usual page count is for astrology books, but for an average 128-page book with some graphics (graphs, charts, whatever), the word count would probably hover around 30,000 or so. That's a very rough estimate, and will depend on a lot of other factors, including font, trim size, leading, end matter, graphics, etc.
Does that help at all?