I'm writing something and the font is Alegreya in 13 font size. So far I have 891 words and 4 pages. How many pages would that be in a book?
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7Hi! Unfortunately, there's no single answer. This depends entirely on how the book is designed, laid out, and typeset. Every book published or printed needs to decide things like font, font size, margins, spacing, and a bunch of other factors, that meant there's no easy answer of "N pages precisely." Is there a particular reason you want the (estimated) page count?– StandbackCommented May 14, 2018 at 2:28
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2... other factors that massively influence the length of book versus the numbers of words it contains includes average length of paragraphs, how much dialogue there is (as dialog tends to produce lots of short lines that don't have many words on them), number of chapters (as chapters often have blank or half blank pages associated), etc.– JulesCommented May 14, 2018 at 13:11
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1Why do you want to know? If it's too know when you've written enough for your purposes, it would be wiser to research word counts. For example, novels are 50,000 words or more.– J.G.Commented May 14, 2018 at 15:34
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1@J.G. 50k words is generally too short for a novel. More common is in between 80k and 100k. Source: writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/…– Totumus MaximusCommented May 15, 2018 at 8:25
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@TotumusMaximus Very true. There's a lot to say about optimum novel length depending on whether it's your debut, if it's part of a series, genre, techniques etc., more than I thought a comment could deal with. That's why I focused on the definitional minimum instead.– J.G.Commented May 15, 2018 at 8:57
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2 Answers
There is no single answer that can be given for this, since books can be typeset in a variety of different ways, and different font faces and sizes will produce a varying number of words per page.
However, a generally accepted formatting for manuscripts is double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman, with one-inch page margins. Based on that, it's assumed that one page will be approximately 250 words.
Here are some online "calculators" I found that will let you adjust the font face, size, and number of words in order to produce a page count estimate:
WordCounter
Convert Words to Pages
Word Count to Page Count
Words to Page Converter
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Although manuscript format rarely works out the same as printed book format, manuscript format is 250 words per page if the page is completely full, i.e. it's a single paragraph of text with no added spacing. Some publishers prefer to work with an estimated word count based on 250 words per page (or similar if using a different format) rather than the actual word count, because it makes it easier to estimate the number of pages in the final book (which varies acording to format but is likely to be somewhere in the range of 0.5-0.75 * number of manuscript pages).– JulesCommented May 14, 2018 at 13:07
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@Jules Courier used to be the standard font, but Times New Roman has now become more commonly requested. Arial is another possibility. Commented May 14, 2018 at 13:18
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2@Jules I believe it's Courier for screenplays, which have very strict rules, and require a fixed width font. In my experience, book manuscript expectations are much less strict, but Times New Roman is indeed the standard. Commented May 14, 2018 at 16:47
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1Maybe true (although I still see a lot of references suggesting Courier), but the 250 words per page count is definitely based on using Courier, which is much wider per character than Times. I'd expect 300-350 words on a page using Times.– JulesCommented May 14, 2018 at 16:54
Common mass market paperbacks are generally 250-300 words per page. Trade paperbacks typically run a similar count, due to larger type and wider margins. Hardbacks and trade paperbacks are printed from the same plates, most times, so word counts will be the same.
That said, this is variable. Occasionally, a publisher will reduce type size by a point to cut nearly a hundred pages from a very long novel, and this might push the word count on a page to as much as 350; other times, they'll bump type size up a point to "fill out" a short work, dropping the word count per page as low as 200 words. Neither of these practices are as common in this day of electronic typesetting as they were, say, in the 1970s, in part because there are other ways to accomplish the same ends, and in part because the physical thickness of a book on the shelf at the bookstore matters less than it did (in large part because most books sold today aren't on paper at all).
answered Jul 16, 2019 at 14:28
