Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I was wondering if there was a website anywhere that gives you the word count of books. I wanted to compare the length of my WIP to some of the books that I like to read to see if I'm about right in word count...Any suggestions?

~Kristie

For some books, amazon.com have a section called "text stats" which sometimes have the word count in there....the text stats section is below the customer reviews bit....unfortunately they more often than not don't have the word counts

Other than that you can do the LinexPagexwords per line formula.....it's rough, but it takes into consideration font size

so for example The Name of the Wind (which is officially 303K I thnk) is 38x662x12 which gives us 301,872...a reasonable approximiation (but it'll vary wildly with dialogue heavy novels)

Try this: http://www.renlearn.com/store/quiz_home.asp

You just click on "Quiz store" in the above tab (I think the page is open to it now) and enter the title of the book in the prompt there...it doesn't have all the titles I've looked for, but it has a lot!!

Word count doesn't give a useful metric for publication. Page count is how publishers estimate book size. A simple formula is 350 words per page.

Actual estimating formulas take into account variant word length, varying from writer to writer as much as fifteen percent, and chapter opening page sinks, chapter end risers, chapter recto and verso pages, headers, footers, front matter, back matter, and factor in print run based on divisions of four leaf and signature cutting and folding.

A book may have blank pages to make up a four division. For example, 250 pages is not divisible by four. 252 pages is. Front matter and back matter often do not have page numbers. The front and back leaf, two blank pages each, are glued to the board of case cover bound books, too.

The site I've used a lot is this one: http://www.arbookfind.com/UserType.aspx

You have to specify an identity (student/parent/teacher/librarian - no option for "reader", but it doesn't really matter what you pick, it doesn't affect site usage), then you can type in the name of the book in the quick search. It'll give you the word count in the book's summary when you click on its title. I think it mostly only has kids' (ie YA and younger) books.

RE: polymath's comment, it will also give you page count for all the different editions, so you can get an idea of how word count translated. Obviously page count depends partly on the font/margins/etc the layout designers have chosen to use.

Thanks! Sanderling that AR site is just what I needed, thank you!!

~Kristie

Thanks. It's what I needbasketball stars