Writer Sanctum
Other & Off-Topics => Bar & Grill [Public] => Topic started by: Shoe on September 24, 2019, 09:35:00 AM
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While cleaning up bookmarks I came across this summary from HP titled "Average Book Length: Guess How Many Words Are In A Novel" and thought I'd share it. (The median book length on Amazon is 64,500.)
“Animal Farm”
29,966 words (75% of books have more words)
“Ethan Frome”
30,191 words (75% of books have more words)
“The Crying of Lot 49”
46,573 words (64% of books have more words)
“Slaughterhouse-Five”
47,192 words (64% of books have more words)
“We Have Always Lived in the Castle”
53,510 words (58% of books have more words)
“Lord of the Flies”
62,481 words (51% of books have more words)
“Brave New World”
64,531 words (50% of books have more words)
“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”
70,570 words (45% of books have more words)
“Portnoy’s Complaint”
78,535 words (41% of books have more words)
“Lolita”
112,473 words (21% of books have more words)
“Madame Bovary”
117,963 words (18% of books have more words)
“Mansfield Park”
159, 344 words (9% of books have more words)
“Moby-Dick”
209,117 words (4% of books have more words)
“East of Eden”
226,741 words (3% of books have more words)
“Ulysses”
262,869 words (2% of books have more words)
“Middlemarch”
310,593 words (2% of books have more words)
“War and Peace”
544,406 words (0% of books have more words)
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Poor Fellow My Country by Xavier Herbert clocks in at 852,000 words in English and was published in a single volume.
I've beaten East of Eden. Next goal is 1,000,000 words. ;)
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Very interesting. My longest novel is approximately 110k words, but if I wrote it today it would probably clock in around 70k or 80k. As I've learned how to write better, I find that I tend to write shorter, too. I once cut 20k words out of a 75k novel draft without removing any characters or subplots.
Someday, though, I hope to write a book as good as War and Peace. It is far easier to write a book as long as that masterpiece than it is to write something as good.