I know the average number of pages in a book for the genre I am writing in however I am trying to figure out how that translates to my manuscript. I am writing it using the Word Book Manuscript template but unless I am missing something that doesn't really help me. So, since I am writing a children's/Young adult novel for ages 9+ I am thinking it should be atleast 200 pages. Is there a way to figure out how many pages I currently have using my manuscript (as if it were an actual book - the pages in my manuscript are numbered). I have a lot farther to go and I know it isn't a real worry, I just would like to be able to set up my story a little better. Thanks
There is no rule, and it goes by word count, anyway, not pages. Remember, other than the first three, Harry Potter is unusually long for a middle grade book, so to put a minimun of 200 pages, which comes to about 45k words, is not necessary. The majority of the books I've seen that are much longer are from authors who have already proven that kids will take the time to read it. For middle grade, you can sometimes get away with as little as 10k words, depending on the publisher.
Thanks, I am about to finish the first 1/3 of my book and I am hoping by the end to be at around 35,000 to 45,000 words and about 25 chapters. My daughter's books are about that many chapters but obviously I wasn't about to do a word count. Thanks again!
if you're formatting with the standard method of 1" margins all around, typed double-spaced in courier 12 pt font on letter-sized paper, you'll come out with an average of 250 words per page... and you should never go by page count, as agents/publishers only consider total word count... fyi, the number of pages can vary greatly in printed books, depending on page size and styling and which font is used... also, you don't need to do a total word count to figure a book's size... all you have to do is just count the words on a few pages, average out the number per page and then multiply that by the total number of pages... even easier is to check the book out at amazon and see if they have a 'text stats' link for it... that will give you not only the word count, but much, much more, like vocabulary stats and other stuff that will help you to learn how to write effectively for children of a similar age range...
