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Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are runs just 338 words. It’s 40-48 pages (depending on which edition) contains 1,200 or more words. Perhaps the most famous book to fall into this category is The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper.
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Many children learn to read on the very books their parents read to them earlier, so picture books often double up for both purposes. Some picture books target toddlers, whereas others target early readers. As they start to learn to read, these are the books they practice on. But older toddlers and kindergarteners have a bigger attention span and are more interested in hearing the story, not just looking at the pictures. Picture books are often read to children by their parents. It runs 14 pages, and if my memory serves me well, about 60 words. Moo, Baa, La La La! by Sandra Boynton is one of my favorites. That is so that parents can read just a few words for each picture a young toddler views. In most cases, board books have fewer than 100 words. Neither can adults, by the way – get out your chain saw! Toddlers can’t rip those pages (on purpose, or by accident). Those pages are made from card stock a few millimeters thick. If you are wondering what a board book is, it’s small book of just a couple dozen ‘pages’, often fewer. Complicating matters is that children in the 8-12 age range might read both picture books and chapter books at the same time, often depending on the type of story or topic. Books they read and books read to them might be of different lengths.Īs children learn to read, some leap forward, while others lag behind. Then, children start reading on their own, but parents still read to them. There are so many factors.įirst, at a very young age, parents read to their children. The biggest challenge in determining manuscript length is for young audiences. Should your book follow the average book word count?.Infographic: average book word count by genre and age.Here are the best practices for word counts in the publishing industry today. Rowling had made a name for herself by then.īut if you are just starting out, the publisher is in control. After the first two books, the following volumes got progressively longer, as J.K.
Word count of famous books series#
Place the Harry Potter series side by side and see how much thicker The Half Blood Prince is than all the others – almost three times as long as the first two books, in fact. If you have made a name for yourself, you might even be in control with a traditional publisher. Or you might ask yourself whether you have enough in your story to engage the audience. For instance, you might want to transform one book into a trilogy. They might make you change your approach. But you still might want to understand them. If you plan to self-publish, you obviously don’t have to follow the guidelines. Once you have a name for yourself, it’s easier to break the rules. Pay attention to the average amount of words in a book of your genre. First-time authors are advised to follow them pretty closely if you want to get published. What follows is best practice to meet those industry expectations.
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There are no “rules” as to book length, although there are some publishing industry guidelines.