272 pages is how many words...?

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Sc00t

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Yeah so I want to know how many words there are in this one novel by nick Hornby. There are 272 pages in his paperback edition, how many WORDS do you think that might be? Or, do you know where i can find out the word count of published novels?
 

nevada

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scoot, you'll have to do it the hard way. Count the words in one line, multiply that by the lines on the page (Pick a typical page) then multiply that number by the number of pages. That'll give you an average. I think someone said that Amazon has a word count? Maybe someone else remembers this more clearly than I.
 

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couldnt find it on amazon personally, just a page count (272, lol.) and then i was like "THE GUYS AT AW WILL KNOW!!!" :) Thanks, thats a good idea Nevada. I think ill just do that. :)
 

Nickie

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I always wonder why people are so concerned with word count? Ok, it's good to have an idea, but what I really am interested in (and this from my experience as a publisher) is the number of pages (single spaced in Word, by preference Times New Roman 12). I can immediately tell how many pages a book will have, or what size it should be printed in. Whenever I receive a new manuscript, I look at the number of pages in it. Sometimes it's too long (over 400 pages, a book becomes too expensive to produce, and even more expensive to sell) and most likely it contains unnecessary information. Then we have to cut in it, of course in agreement with the author.


Nickie
 

JumpingJack

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So, which book are we talking about? That would help a lot :)
amazon.COM (must be the .com) has word counts on most books

other than that 250 x 277 = 69250, using 250 average per page, but thats just a rough estimate.
 

Sc00t

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121,000 approx. I get. :) Thanks guys. It was Nick Hornby's "How To Be Good" that I looked at in the end, as that is the length I'm looking at writing.

Thank you for everyones help thus far. Jumping Jack, I cant find a word count on Amazon, could you look? lol. it redirects me to .co.uk as im in England. :)
 
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Marlowe

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Nickie said:
I always wonder why people are so concerned with word count? Ok, it's good to have an idea, but what I really am interested in (and this from my experience as a publisher) is the number of pages (single spaced in Word, by preference Times New Roman 12). I can immediately tell how many pages a book will have, or what size it should be printed in.

That reminds of something- I was under the impression that you're supposed to send a manuscript double-space? (I guess that might be more for comments or edits, though.) And how many pages does a single space Word document in Times page equal in a paperback?
 

Sc00t

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i finally managed to get on .com without it redirecting. You Americans have it EASY! 91,183 words in "A Long Way Down" by Nick Hornby. Thanks for the help, you're all like, awesome at this.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Marlowe said:
That reminds of something- I was under the impression that you're supposed to send a manuscript double-space? (I guess that might be more for comments or edits, though.) And how many pages does a single space Word document in Times page equal in a paperback?

There's no real way to know for sure. Especially in Times.

If YOU happen to be the publisher, you can tell, only because you know how YOU do things, and you can make a book come out with roughly the number of pages you want it to. But there's no way of telling exactly how many pages it would be for another publisher.

There's a reason nearly all publishers are considerably more interested in word count than page count. Page count is always deceptive, word count, at least with Courier 12, isn't.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Sc00t said:
121,000 approx. I get. :) Thanks guys. It was Nick Hornby's "How To Be Good" that I looked at in the end, as that is the length I'm looking at writing.

Thank you for everyones help thus far. Jumping Jack, I cant find a word count on Amazon, could you look? lol. it redirects me to .co.uk as im in England. :)

Amazon says "How to Be Good" is 81,346 words.
 

Marlowe

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Jamesaritchie said:
There's a reason nearly all publishers are considerably more interested in word count than page count. Page count is always deceptive, word count, at least with Courier 12, isn't.

That makes sense- thanks!
 

blacbird

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I've checked a few times in the past, just for curiosity, and found that most normally-printed novels run in the range of 300-350 words per page. That's good enough for a quick rough estimate, at least.

caw.
 

Sesselja

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so would you all say then, that 50,000 words is more than a reasonable size for a first novel?

I would say it's on the lean side.
 

Julie Worth

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Sc00t said:
so would you all say then, that 50,000 words is more than a reasonable size for a first novel?

Depends on the genre. For most of them you'd be in novella territory. In SF/fantasy, many publishers are looking for 100,000 words. On the other hand, Nicholas Sparks got a million bucks for his first novel. At 52,000 words, I would have thought it too short to interest anyone.

BTW, there are many other threads on this. See here.
 
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PeeDee

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Sc00t said:
so would you all say then, that 50,000 words is more than a reasonable size for a first novel?

I would probably start to relax when I'd hit 80,000 words, but I don't feel truly home free until I hit 100,000 words.

...though actually, this is not something that I generally worry about. I have my list of things to be concerned about such as 1) am I telling a good story 2) am I telling a good story someone else has already told 3) is it interesting, and so on. By the time I worry overly about the length, I'm mostly done writing.
 

maestrowork

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JumpingJack said:
other than that 250 x 277 = 69250, using 250 average per page, but thats just a rough estimate.

Jamesaritchie said:
Amazon says "How to Be Good" is 81,346 words.

Trade paperback would be about 300 words on each page, not 250 (that's manuscript size). 300x277 would be about 80-85K.

Mine clocked at 300x240 = 72K, which is just about right.
 
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