If someone were to complete a 120,000 word novel, approximately how many pages would that be in a published (paperback) novel? And then, because I don't want to work out any maths, for every 10,000 words how many book pages is that?
There are no fixed rules for this. Page number revert to the printer and/or the publishing house—they use different fonts [shape and size], illustrations, different structure organization. There might be an international standard, but it does not make a difference [i.e: 12 pt courier new double spaced], but still; word count is conceded.
Try the following, see if it helps as general guidance: http://www.writersservices.com/wps/p_word_count.htm
Robert, Thanks for sharing that site. I haven't run across it before. Bluemouth12, Publishers have their own forumlas, based on different fonts and sizes. Some give you instructions how to calculate "actual" number of words, which they will translate into page space/# of pages. SFWA/Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America ( http://www.sfwa.org ) has a number of articles on writing, including several on word counts. Terry
Cheers for both of those sites. It doesn't really matter, no, but it's something I've never known but wanted to find out.
Yeah, I found that an interesting question. All I know is that I write chapters of 8-9k, they save as having around 100kb on the icon, and they print out at just over 20 pages each in single space. Publishers want manuscipts submitted in double space, but I think single space is closer to the page in your book at the end of the process. So, a wild estimate would be that you wrote 13 chapters and produced a 1,300kb translating into 260 pages of text. Obviously, this is a guestimate which doesn't account for all the factors of printing - for example, the Octavo style of pocketbook printing is still popular in Japan, but these tiny books require a huge number of pages to print a novel. There are also funny effects in translating texts across languages (you want your stuff in 13 languages, right?) Harry Potter book 5 is one volume in English, 2 volumes in Japanese and 5 volumes in Korean - each country's language's spatial efficiency and printing customs coming into play.
Hey, I clicked on the link and the red-line graph tallied almost exactly! I'm the guestimator, a word couting cyborg sent back from the future. Oh - and my rough answer would be 10,000 words=22 pages.
Interesting. If that's the case then a 120,000 word book equals approximately 264 book pages, not including factors such as large print size and langauges other than english. That's a heap of writing and it makes me wonder how daunting a task it must have been for authors who published works of up to and over a thousand pages.
Well my count puts 10,000 words at more like 30 pages, but as has already been stated, there is no set word-to-page ratio.
word count per page in books can run between 250 and 350 or more, depending on the print factors... if you really wanted to know, why didn't you just count several lines on a page, multiply the average by the number of lines and multiply that by the total number of pages?... it'll be close enough...
Because I said I didn't want to spend my time counting things. It's boring. And also, I got some excellent replies and information from other people after posting the topic so I see no problem...
