How Long Is a Novel?
A typical novel runs between 54,500 and 126,700 words. That is the middle half of the 1,202 English-language novels our customers sent us to translate, and the median novel, longer than half of them and shorter than the other half, has 90,900 words.
The genre moves that number a long way, from a median of 75,300 words (Coming of age) to 131,300 words (War). Below you will find the figures for each genre and type of book, a calculator that turns words into pages, and how much longer or shorter a book gets once translated.
Our own data: 2,844 English-language books from 1,098 customers, uploaded for translation between July 2025 and October 2026. How we measured
- Median novel
- 90,900 words
- of 1,202 novels in English
- Middle half of novels
- 54,500 to 126,700 words
- a quarter are shorter, a quarter longer
- Words per page of a novel
- 316
- median of 196 novels sent as PDF
- Pages of a novel
- 294
- median of the same PDF novels
Novel Word Count by Genre
Each bar runs from the first quartile to the third, so half of the novels of the genre fall inside it, and the dot marks the median. A novel can have two genres, in which case it counts in both.
- All novels 90,900 54,500 to 126,700
- War 131,300 100,600 to 178,900
- Science fiction 116,500 68,400 to 161,600
- Fantasy 106,000 73,900 to 161,500
- Romance 98,900 62,700 to 125,200
- Crime 96,400 52,900 to 120,000
- Adventure 94,300 66,700 to 145,700
- Historical fiction 91,200 50,500 to 127,500
- Thriller 90,900 68,000 to 113,800
- Mystery 87,400 58,300 to 126,500
- Contemporary 85,600 61,700 to 106,700
- Coming of age 75,300 58,400 to 96,600
Thousands of words
We list a genre only when at least 30 novels from at least 20 different customers belong to it.
What Counts as a Novel
No rule binds every publisher, but the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association counts a work of 40,000 words or more as a novel in the rules of the Nebula Awards. A quarter of the novels we received were shorter than 54,500 words, and a quarter were longer than 126,700 words.
Words to Pages Calculator
Type the word count of your book to see how many pages it fills, at the words per page we measured for its type of book or at your own, and how long it becomes in another language.
In English
About 288 pages
91,000 words at 316 words per page
In Spanish
About 303 pages
and about 92,100 words
Translated from English into Spanish, the books we measured took 5% more characters, and the pages grow with them.
How Many Words per Page in a Book?
About 298 words. That is the median page of the 997 English-language books our customers sent us as PDF, counted over every page of the file from the title page to the last, and half of these books held between 277 and 316 words per page.
- A novel of 200 pages holds about 63,000 words.
- A novel of 300 pages holds about 95,000 words.
- A novel of 400 pages holds about 126,000 words.
These examples use the 316 words per page of the novels we received. A larger trim size or a smaller font puts more words on each page, so use the calculator above with your own figure when you know it.
| Type of book | Words per page | Middle half | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| Novel | 316 308 to 325 | 308 to 325 | 196 |
| Spiritual | 312 293 to 324 | 293 to 324 | 105 |
| Memoir | 310 288 to 330 | 288 to 330 | 41 |
| Self-help | 305 293 to 313 | 293 to 313 | 66 |
| History | 297 286 to 314 | 286 to 314 | 42 |
| Manual | 286 260 to 306 | 260 to 306 | 146 |
| Academic | 283 270 to 305 | 270 to 305 | 129 |
| Textbook | 283 264 to 302 | 264 to 302 | 124 |
Word Count by Type of Book
The table gives the median and the middle half of each type of book we received at least 30 times from 20 different customers, longest first.
| Type of book | Median word count | Middle half | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| History | 99,400 64,300 to 146,800 | 64,300 to 146,800 | 74 |
| Science | 97,800 43,100 to 120,100 | 43,100 to 120,100 | 45 |
| Novel | 90,900 54,500 to 126,700 | 54,500 to 126,700 | 1,202 |
| Textbook | 90,600 50,100 to 169,700 | 50,100 to 169,700 | 209 |
| Academic | 78,700 34,200 to 128,500 | 34,200 to 128,500 | 186 |
| Memoir | 69,600 42,000 to 102,100 | 42,000 to 102,100 | 123 |
| Biography and autobiography | 54,700 44,900 to 102,800 | 44,900 to 102,800 | 32 |
| Business | 53,700 32,600 to 80,100 | 32,600 to 80,100 | 64 |
| Self-help | 51,100 29,600 to 72,400 | 29,600 to 72,400 | 197 |
| Spiritual | 37,800 19,200 to 71,000 | 19,200 to 71,000 | 221 |
| Technical documentation | 35,800 12,000 to 87,600 | 12,000 to 87,600 | 35 |
| Manual | 34,000 13,700 to 68,600 | 13,700 to 68,600 | 242 |
| Novella | 29,900 10,300 to 42,300 | 10,300 to 42,300 | 79 |
Novel Word Count by Language
We also received enough novels written in 5 other languages to measure them the same way. Their median went from 67,200 words (French) to 44,500 words (Russian), against 90,900 words for the novels written in English.
A word is not the same unit in every language. Translated from English into Russian, our books had 86% as many words as the original, so read the gap between two languages with that in mind.
| Language of the book | Median word count | Middle half | Novels |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | 90,900 54,500 to 126,700 | 54,500 to 126,700 | 1,202 |
| French | 67,200 38,300 to 98,200 | 38,300 to 98,200 | 112 |
| German | 67,200 31,700 to 101,600 | 31,700 to 101,600 | 109 |
| Italian | 58,600 46,800 to 83,900 | 46,800 to 83,900 | 58 |
| Spanish | 50,700 32,000 to 91,600 | 32,000 to 91,600 | 33 |
| Russian | 44,500 32,200 to 78,600 | 32,200 to 78,600 | 31 |
Words per Page by Language
Words are longer in some languages than in others, so the same page holds more or fewer of them. Over every book sent as PDF, the median page held 300 words in Spanish and 271 in German.
| Language of the book | Words per page | Middle half | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | 298 277 to 316 | 277 to 316 | 997 |
| Spanish | 300 282 to 310 | 282 to 310 | 58 |
| French | 292 262 to 305 | 262 to 305 | 89 |
| Italian | 279 261 to 293 | 261 to 293 | 32 |
| German | 271 247 to 286 | 247 to 286 | 87 |
We list a language only when at least 30 books from at least 20 different customers were written in it. These are books our customers chose to translate, so they describe our customers more than the book market of each language.
How Long Is a Book After Translation?
It depends on the language. Translated from English, the books we measured took 14% more characters in German and 5% fewer in Ukrainian. With the same layout, the page count follows the characters, so a translation into German needs about 14% more pages.
Words and characters do not move together. Into Turkish, our translations from English had 83% as many words as the original but 98% as many characters, which is why a word count alone tells you little about the length of a translation.
More pages mean a wider spine, so the cover of the print edition has to be laid out again for the translation, and a higher printing cost on print-on-demand services such as Amazon KDP, which charge by the page.
| Translation | Characters | Words | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| English to Russian | −4% | −14% | 88 |
| English to German | +14% | 0% | 57 |
| English to Spanish | +5% | +1% | 56 |
| English to French | +10% | +2% | 55 |
| English to Polish | +1% | −10% | 42 |
| English to Italian | +9% | +1% | 39 |
| English to Ukrainian | −5% | −13% | 21 |
| English to Portuguese | +4% | 0% | 18 |
| English to Turkish | −2% | −17% | 15 |
| French to English | −9% | −6% | 53 |
| German to English | −8% | 0% | 44 |
| Italian to English | −8% | −2% | 22 |
| Spanish to English | −7% | −5% | 21 |
Measured on 531 translations we finished between July 2026 and October 2026. We list a language pair only with at least 15 translations from 8 different customers, and only languages written in the Latin or Cyrillic alphabet, where a character takes about the same room on the page.
How We Measured
The word counts come from every English-language book a customer paid us to translate between July 2025 and October 2026, counted once even when it was translated into several languages. Free previews, our own test orders and refunded orders are left out, and so are scanned PDFs, whose words cannot be counted before the text is recognized. We count the words of the whole file, front and back matter included, as the runs of characters between spaces.
We classify every book we translate by its type and by one or two genres, and the figures above group the books that way. Each customer counts once in each figure: when a publisher sent us forty thrillers, those forty books weigh as much together as one author's single thriller, so a large catalog cannot decide the length of a genre on its own.
The figures by language apply the same rules to the books written in each other language. Outside English, we have too few books of each genre and each type of book to publish them.
Words per page divide the words of a PDF by its number of pages. The change after translation compares the characters, spaces included, and the words of each passage of a book with those of its translation, and gives the median over the books of each language pair.
No figure describes a single book, and none can be traced back to one. These are books someone chose to pay to translate, so they describe the books of our customers rather than every book in print.
Measured on 29 October 2026. You are welcome to quote these figures with a link to this page.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How many words are in a novel?
- The median novel our customers sent us to translate had 90,900 words, and half of them ran between 54,500 and 126,700 words. By genre, the median went from 75,300 words (Coming of age) to 131,300 words (War).
- What is the minimum word count for a novel?
- There is no rule that binds every publisher, but the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association counts a work of 40,000 words or more as a novel for the Nebula Awards. A quarter of the novels we received were shorter than 54,500 words.
- How many words are on a page of a book?
- About 298. That is the median page of the English-language books our customers sent us as PDF, and novels held 316 words per page.
- How many pages is a 90,900-word novel?
- About 288 pages, at the 316 words per page of the novels our customers sent us as PDF. A different trim size, font or line spacing changes it, and the calculator on this page takes your own words per page.
- Does a book get longer when it is translated?
- It depends on the language. Translated from English, the books we measured took 14% more characters in German and 5% fewer in Ukrainian. With the same layout, the page count changes by about as much.
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