How Is Word Count Calculated? (Penny Rader)

Did I pick a fun topic or what?

While researching the market you want to write for, you’ve probably noticed that the publishers' guidelines include word count. What is word count, you ask? It's the maximum (and sometimes the minimum) number of words the publisher will accept for a specific line.

How do you know how many pages equal how many words? Easy. Each page equals 250 words. That’s 25 lines at 10 words per line (using 12 pt. Courier New). Even if you have short lines of dialogue, one page still equals 250 words. The first page of chapters that begin 1/3 to 1/2 of the way down the page? Yep. 250 words.

For example:

20 pages = 5000 words
100 pages = 25,000 words
200 pages = 50,000 words
240 pages = 60,000 words
280 pages = 70,000 words
300 pages = 75,000 words
320 pages = 80,000 words
360 pages = 90,000 words
400 pages = 100,000 words
500 pages = 125,000 words

For a chart broken down by Courier New and Times New Roman, check out this article on WARA’s website: http://www.warawriters.com/articles/manuscript_word_count.html

Wondering how you get 25 lines to a page? Check out Roxann’s article on templates: http://www.warawriters.com/template.html

Just for fun: Starla Kaye has a nifty link to Word Counter on her website, http://www.starlakayeromance.com/joomla/. It tells you the most frequently used words in a piece of writing. One of my favorite words seems to be “very.”

One thing to watch for: some of the e-publishers are using the computer word count, which in my experience, usually shows fewer words. For example, what is 100,000 words using the above method might be 79,932 words using your computer's word count. (If you’re using Word, you can find Word Count under Tools.) So, check those guidelines to see how the publisher counts the words.

What has your experience been with the Wonderful World of Word Count? Please chime in.