Fantasy & Sci-Fi: 100,000–115,000 words
Examples
The #1 longest book, according to Guinness World Records, is Marcel Proust's seven-volume novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past), clocking in at around 9.6 million characters and over 1.2 million words, a masterpiece of French literature published between 1913 and 1927.
In general, the Safe Zone for adult fiction is 70,000-100,000, and the Safe Zone for adult nonfiction is 60,000-90,000 words. Less than that and your book is probably too short. More than that and your book is probably too long.
According to Guinness World Records, as of 2023, World-2023 ESN Publications and London Organisation of Skills Development Ltd is the thickest book ever to have been physically produced, with a page count of 100,100.
50,000–100,000 words
Editors and agents will still tend to prefer a conventional word count of between 50,000 and 100,000 words for literary fiction, but there can also be space for shorter novels if they have expertly crafted sentences and are full of emotional resonance and thought-provoking themes.
Books have 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 on the copyright page as a printer's key, or number line, to indicate the specific printing run; the lowest number present (e.g., a "1" for the first print, "2" for the second) shows the printing, making it easy to identify first editions and track subsequent printings without re-typesetting the entire page by simply removing numbers as books are reprinted.
A 100,000-word book is about 400 pages.
Yes, reading 100 pages in 2 hours (which is 50 pages/hour or about 200-250 words per minute) is considered a good, solid reading pace, often average to slightly fast, but it depends heavily on the material's difficulty and your personal comprehension goals, with dense texts taking longer and simple fiction taking less time.
On average, you'll need about 10 to 12 hours to finish a 400-page book, assuming your reading speed is 200-250 words per minute (WPM). Want to speed up a bit? We've found practical tips and insights on speed reading to help you hit your self-learning goals faster and add one more productive hobby to your list.
According to Guinness World Records, the Bible is the best-selling "book" of all time with an estimated 6 billion copies sold and distributed as of 1995. Sales estimates for other printed religious texts include at least 800 million copies for the Qur'an and 200 million copies for the Book of Mormon.
Yes, the number line 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 almost always indicates a first edition, first printing, as the presence of the number "1" signifies the initial print run, and this specific alternating pattern is a convention used by certain publishers, like Anness Publishing, to show the lowest number (1) is the first printing. Publishers use various number line styles, but as long as the "1" is present, it's a first edition, even if the sequence is unconventional.
For traditionally published authors, royalties range between 10% and 15% of the retail price of the book. If a book sells for $20 and the royalty rate is 10%, the author would make $2 per book sold. But remember, publishers don't pay royalties out until the author has earned back their advance.
Our rough guess is there are 292,000 words in this book. At a pace averaging 250 words per minute, this book will take 19 hours and 28 minutes to read. With a half hour per day, this will take 39 days to read.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – 47,094 words.
The average word count for a standard novel typically falls between 70,000 and 100,000 words. A minimum of 40,000 words is usually considered the threshold for a novel, while the maximum word count can be around 140,000, depending on your book's genre.
For Stephen King, mornings are prime writing time. His goal is to write about 10 pages per day, about 2,000 words. That's about a million words in a year and a half.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins – 99,750 words (source)
On page 53, in the list of school supplies that Harry receives from Hogwarts, the item “1 wand” must appear twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. This mistake was corrected in the second printing of the book (although it re-appeared in some later printings).
Popular Novels Word Count 120k 125k Books
The Bible is the best-selling book of all time, with billions of copies distributed, followed by other religious texts and political works like the Qur'an and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Little Red Book). For fiction, Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote is often cited as the best-selling novel, with estimates around 500 million copies, while the Harry Potter series leads modern fiction sales.
The industry standard for picture book page counts for ages 3–8 is 32 pages long. The reason for this is that 32 pages can be printed on one sheet of paper at the printing company making it more cost effective.
A series of 2 books = Duology A series of 3 books = Trilogy A series of 4 books = Tetralogy A series of 5 books = Pentalogy A series of 6 books = Hexalogy A series of 7 books = Heptalogy A series of 8 books = Octology A series of 9 books = Ennealogy A series of 10 books = Decology A series of 11 books = Undecology A ...