Average fiction ebook length?

[westy]

Originally Posted by James_Wilde

Welcome!


About as long as a piece of rope.



That's a bit pricey for an ebook, so I'd be expecting a lot of words for my money.



Just checked. A 140,000 word file in rtf format is about 2.5 MB. So your 50 MB limit would be 2,800,000 words. You'd get even more if you wrote it in odt format, probably less in Word format.

Seriously, if you check the guidelines from, say, Mills & Boone, they're looking at ca 50,000 words (if I remember correctly). My first book was 200,000, and about 1/3 too long (I'm working on it now). My second is about 140,000, and I think about right. That's about what I expect for a decent novel.

A novel nowadays usually has about 350-400 words per page, irrespective of whether it's a paperback or hardcover, at least here in Sweden, so multiply that by the number of pages in a good novel.

Many thanks for to 50MB clarification - that's that question answered. There's (way more than) ample space for a good book length and graphics.

Really appreciate all your input on my questions guys, it has certainly helped my thinking on this.
Will carry out the Amazon market research as suggested to establish a genre expectancy on length and cost.

Thanks again.

[ndixon]

I realise I've come to this discussion a little late, but here's my tuppence-worth.

I have always understood that as a rule of thumb, you should assume about 250 words to a page.
So every 100 pages would be about 25k words; 75k words would be about 300 pages.

100k words would therefore be about 450 pages, which is about as much as I'd want to read in a single volume.

But bear in mind that most ebook formats are compressed (RTF is not compressed), so if you have mostly text and few illustrations, most novel-length books should turn out to be under 1MB.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by ndixon

I have always understood that as a rule of thumb, you should assume about 250 words to a page.
So every 100 pages would be about 25k words; 75k words would be about 300 pages.

100k words would therefore be about 450 pages, which is about as much as I'd want to read in a single volume.

Those numbers can not be right, my 100k word book as published in trade paperback is 334 pages.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Those numbers can not be right, my 100k word book as published in trade paperback is 334 pages.

I've seen the 250 words per page estimate as well (based, if I remember correctly, on a monospaced 12pt font, lines double-spaced on a manuscript page with inch margins, as a reasonable first pass guess at how the final result may come out). But the words-to-print-page calculation is always going to be highly variable: font-type, font-size, page-format, margins, how much is dialogue, and so on.

This page gives some examples, ranging from less than 200 words per page to well over 300 words per page.

If I am enjoying a book I don't really care how long it is: I happily read Lord of the Rings as a single volume the first time I found it - if I was reading it now on an e-reader I don't see any reason why I'd want it broken into three volumes.

[Pulpmeister]

Typically, Agatha Christie novels runs to about 80,000 words. Alistair MacLean's Where Eagles Dare, 77,000 (Maclean typically ran to 80,000 approx.) DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe, 120,000 words; Huxley's Brave New World, 65,000; Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 115,000. Arthur C Clarke Rendezvous With Rama, 70,000 roughly. Dick Francis probably 80-90,000 words. Hammett's The Maltese Falcon 70,000.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

Typically, Agatha Christie novels runs to about 80,000 words. Alistair MacLean's Where Eagles Dare, 77,000 (Maclean typically ran to 80,000 approx.) DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe, 120,000 words; Huxley's Brave New World, 65,000; Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 115,000. Arthur C Clarke Rendezvous With Rama, 70,000 roughly. Dick Francis probably 80-90,000 words. Hammett's The Maltese Falcon 70,000.

Thanks. This was useful input.

Interesting that all the serial writers, Christie, MacLean, Clarke, Francis land around 80000. Interesting that Heinlein runs to 115000.

Be also interesting to see how many words other classics run to, say Jane Austen (almost a serial writer), Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Elisabeth Gaskell. How about Harold Robbins and, say, Dan Brown? Well, no, Dan Brown, like John Grisham, writes film manuscripts thinly disguised as books. What about J K Rowling? Her output seemed to increase for every book.

[VydorScope]

My first novel, 85,305 words. My second novel 87,846 words. My third novel is 101,185 words. My forth is just now passing 70k, but I am not done with it yet. So I guess that puts me in the right ball park at least.

[JSWolf]

The number of pages depends on the type size, the margins, and the size of the pages. Can you say what all that will be to be able to estimate the number of pages?

[Pulpmeister]

Just had a look at Lee Child, Die Trying. About 300 words per page, 550 pages of text. Knock off ten percent for white space at chapters, etc, and you get around 140,000 - 150,000 words.

Set in 10/12 Plantin, usual small paperback size, UK edition. 34 lines per page, typically 8-10 words per line where the line is full, obviously less in short sharp exchanges of dialogue. I counted 50 characters per line in a typical full line.

[Lazybones]

My novels have ranged from 50k to 275k. I did reduce the cost of the 50k novel to 99 cents since I thought it was a bit thin for $2.99. But as long as the story is well-written and you can tell a complete story I think length is one of those subjective things that matters less than the attention it gets.

However, if it is shorter than that, you might want to include a note about word count in the book description. I received a number of "too short" comments on a 19k word novella (even though it was a free giveaway and clearly identified as a novella).

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Lazybones

However, if it is shorter than that, you might want to include a note about word count in the book description. I received a number of "too short" comments on a 19k word novella (even though it was a free giveaway and clearly identified as a novella).

I would suggest that something that short be part of a collection instead of a one off.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

I would suggest that something that short be part of a collection instead of a one off.

If it's part of a series, a collection of short stories can be a pain in the ass. Take the Dresden Files (for example). There is a book out that is a collection of shorts that fit in between the full length novels. But you have to back and forth read between the novels and the shorts. I would rather but the shorts as a collection of individual eBooks.