technical question

The writing process, writing advice, and updates on your work in progress
Post Reply
User avatar
IlGrido
Posts: 10
Joined: August 11th, 2010, 1:53 am
Contact:

technical question

Post by IlGrido » August 29th, 2010, 9:04 pm

Ok sorry if there's already been a post about this, but I was just wondering if there was a conversion thingie as to how many words is a single published book page. And also how many words would people say is a collection of short stories? So far I have around 13,000 words. How many books size pages would that be, does anyone know? Thanks.

User avatar
polymath
Posts: 1821
Joined: December 8th, 2009, 11:22 am
Location: Babel
Contact:

Re: technical question

Post by polymath » August 30th, 2010, 12:09 am

A standard published prose page is about 350 words. However, actual count varies widely from book to book and writer to writer. A short story collection often has a lot of added content, and frequently page padding to reach a standard economy of scale design layout. Best of anthologies regularly have content crammed in too, to accommodate more content.

For a writer, a working published format page count bases estimates on the idealized number of words, not actual wordprocesor word count, but a typesetters' word count, i.e., one full page of Standard Manuscript Format in a monospaced 12 point typeface equals 250 words, 25 lines of 10 idealized words, and multiply manuscript page count times 0.70 for published format page count. 13,000 words in wordprocessor word count might be equivalent to anywhere from 50 to 60 SMF manuscript pages, or somewhere in the range of 35 to 45 or so published format pages. Plus a few, say, a minimum of a dozen frontmatter and backmatter pages.

To illustrate, the word I is equivalent to one-sixth of an idealized word. An idealized word is approximately six glyphs, Easter is one idealized word.

Book page counts vary widely as well. A thinner book might have on average 240 or so pages. Thicker 400 or so. A middle grade book might have up to 160 or so. Anything less than 48 or so pages causes binding headaches and usually defauts to wire stitch binding, a folded and stapled chapbook, instead of perfection binding, glued gather and glued on cover, or signature stitched binding, casecover or hardback.
Spread the love of written word.

User avatar
poptart
Posts: 127
Joined: December 7th, 2009, 2:25 pm
Location: Scotland
Contact:

Re: technical question

Post by poptart » August 30th, 2010, 5:51 am

According to Evan Marshall's "Novel Writing", the formula is:

number of book pages x number of lines on a full page x 9 = number of words

Reversing that, your story is 13,000

13000 divided by 9 words per line = 1444

1444 divided by 33 lines per page = 44
Annoying people since nineteen fifty-seven.

I blog here: http://flyingtart.blogspot.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/sandr_patterson

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Ahrefs [Bot] and 10 guests