How many printed pages?

[azbikergirl]

Can someone give me a rough estimate of how many printed pages would be in a book of 120,000 words?

Thanks!

[XThe NavigatorX]

It would depend on the format of the book, but off the top off my head I think a trade paperback of that length would be about 300-350 pages, depending on the amount of dialogue versus long paragraphs.

[maestrowork]

About 400 pages.

[Coco82]

How do you figure that out? I'm trying to do the same thing, but I don't know the exact amount my book will come to.

[maestrowork]

It depends on the book layout, font size, etc. But most books are (paperback?) are about 300 words per page.

Why do you care at this point?

[Jamesaritchie]

The average novel is about 100,000 words, so add one fifth to that. It's almost impossible to give a page count because very publisher does things just a bit differently.

And it just doesn't matter, anyway. From the writer's end, all that matters is that you deliver a manuscript that falls within the word count a given publisher wants. It's the publisher's job to worry about everything else.

[Ivonia]

Actually, I found this info interesting. While I realize that every publisher does it differently, it's nice to have an idea of the size of your book (guess I'm going to have to add about 10k words at least to my novel, although with the things I want to add in to flesh it out more, I think I'll probalby hit 15-20k words easily).

[Jules Hall]

I did a bit of word counting a while back, and came to the conclusion that the 'average' trade paperback would have about 25% fewer pages in it than a properly formatted manuscript in Courier 11pt with the same text. That's probably the best way of estimating it, as it takes into account how much whitespace you will have, which is ignored if you just look at word count.

[azbikergirl]

Thanks all! That helps.

[RGame]

Most printed pages in books have 35 to 40 lines. Most manuscripts have about 25. So generally it's a 3 to 2 ratio. 3 pages of ms equal about 2 pages of book.

[maestrowork]

For example, my 365-page ms. turns out to be about 210 printed page (6x9) or 270 ( 5x8 ) . So I think the 3:2 ratio is a good guideline.

My ms. is about 75000 words. So apply that to a 120,000-word ms. it comes to about 600 ms. pages, or 400 printed pages (using the 3:2 ratio).