Every Word Counts

Word Counts: A Slightly Deranged Cheat Sheet

Non-writers ask about page count, writers talk about word counts. Page count varies, word count stays constant. However, it can be tricky to find the definitive word count of a book, especially since Amazon stopped reporting counts. For most of the example book counts here I searched for the title and “word count,” so you wouldn’t have to. This information is undoubtedly rife with errors, so use it at your own risk.

6: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.” (shortest short story, probably falsely attributed to Ernest Hemingway)

100-300: Microfiction

100-1,000: Flash Fiction*

~1,000: Picture Books

917: The number of words it takes to learn that there’s “fun to be done!” (Oh The Places You’ll Go, by Dr. Suess)

1,000-7,500: Short Story**

2,093: The number of words it takes to look under the floorboards. (The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allen Poe)

6,453: The number of words it takes to prove that grandma was right. (A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor)

7,500-17,500: Novelette

16,473: The number of words it takes Gregor Samsa to have the worst day of the rest of his life. (The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka)

20,000-40,000: Middle Grade Novels

28,604: The number of words it takes for Mole to give up on spring cleaning forever. (The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Graham)

17,501-40,000: Novella 

29,160: The number of words it takes George to reevaluate his friendship with Lennie (Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck)

25,000-35,000: Young Adult

30,340: The number of words it takes Margaret to get her period. (Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume)

40,001-100,000: Novel

87,978: The number of words it takes Anne to realize her family is a bunch of deadbeat snobs. (Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

1,500-5,000: Chapter (I usually aim for 3,000 words per chapter.)

50,000-75,000: Non-fiction Book

69,600: The number of words it takes to fully investigate all the scientific uses of a dead body. (Stiff, by Mary Roach)

50,000-100,000: Memoir

93,728: The number of words it takes to describe six years of living on a sailboat as a child. (Abishag [unpublished], by D.S.G. Burke)

85,000-150,000: Fantasy (and some Science Fiction) ***

104,400: The number of words it takes Lauren to start a new religion (The Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler)

>150,000: Books by popular and famous authors whose editors are afraid of them.

190,637: The number of words it takes for a wizard boy to find an old cup (The Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling)

*Some publications cap Flash at 500 words.

**Short story is the hardest one to pin down. Some publishers only want stories under 5,000 words. My personal range is somewhere between 1,750 and 3,000 words usually. 

***it takes a lot of words to build a new world

(No thanks whatsoever to Amazon since it stopped reporting word counts of books.)