Book Page Count Calculator

1. Enter your word count. Use the count from your word processor. If the book isn’t finished, use your target.
2. Choose a trim size. 6 × 9 inches is the most common size for novels and nonfiction in the US; 5 × 8 and 5.5 × 8.5 suit shorter fiction; 7 × 10 and 8.5 × 11 suit workbooks and textbooks.
3. Choose a font and spacing preset. Standard is a typical 11-point novel layout. Compact fits more on each page; spacious and large print fit less.
4. Adjust chapters and extra pages. Each chapter starts on a new page, which adds length. Extra pages covers the title page, copyright, contents, acknowledgements and author bio.

The calculator does a simplified version of what a typesetter does. From the trim size it subtracts typical margins to get the text block. From the font size it estimates how many characters fit on a line, and from the line spacing how many lines fit on a page. That gives the words a solid page of text would hold.

Real prose is never solid. Paragraphs end partway across a line, dialogue leaves short lines, and scene breaks leave gaps, so the calculator assumes about four-fifths of each page is filled. On top of that, every chapter begins on a new page, usually lower down (a “sink”), and ends on a partial page, which together cost a little under a page per chapter. Finally it adds your front and back matter and rounds up to an even number, since every sheet in a book has two sides.

For a standard 6 × 9 layout that comes to about 330 words a page, in line with typical trade fiction. Choose a different typeface in the final layout and the count can move 10 to 15 percent either way.

For a 6 × 9 inch paperback in the standard 11-point layout, with default chapters and front matter:

• A novella, 30,000 words: about 108 pages, or 150 at 5 × 8.
• A typical novel, 80,000 words: about 270 pages, or 382 at 5 × 8.
• A long fantasy novel, 120,000 words: about 400 pages, or 568 at 5 × 8.

Children’s picture books work differently. They are planned by spreads, not words: most are 32 pages whatever the word count, because that is how printers fold the sheets.

• Printing cost and price. Print-on-demand services charge per page. On Amazon KDP, a black-ink paperback over 110 pages costs $1.00 plus $0.012 a page, so 100 extra pages costs you $1.20 on every copy. Our KDP royalty calculator shows what that does to your royalty.
• Platform limits. KDP paperbacks need 24 to 828 pages in black ink. A very long book may need a larger trim, a tighter layout or splitting into volumes.
• Spine width. The cover designer needs the final page count to size the spine. Plan with an estimate, then update the cover once the interior is typeset.
• Reader expectations. A 600-page cozy mystery looks like hard work; a 150-page epic fantasy looks thin. Readers notice length on the product page before they read a word.

Reading time assumes about 238 words a minute, the average silent reading speed for adults reported in a 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert. Many readers are faster with light fiction, slower with dense nonfiction.

Audiobook length uses about 9,300 words per finished hour, a widely used industry rule of thumb. A finished hour is an hour of final, edited audio, which is also how narrators price their work. To turn that into a budget, use the audiobook cost calculator.

Anthra formats the book for you: it exports a print-ready PDF at your trim size, an EPUB, and an audiobook narrated from the same manuscript. See the AI book generator and the AI audiobook generator.