Non-Fiction Book Lengths

ManInBlack

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I'm working on a non-fiction book (essentially taking the "blog the book" formula in which I write blog posts with the intention to publish, add about 50% new material, and market it to any fans developed along the way in addition to the target audience) based on analyses of a Fiction franchise. In terms of well-known media, the closest thing I can compare it to is the About Time series of unauthorized guides to Doctor Who, although the intention is to be a little less word-dense - about halfway between that and something like the official guidebooks franchises tend to publish (although it's extremely unlikely that I'm going to be able to include half the illustrations that the guidebooks in question tend to have).

The thing is, I'm a little uncertain as to what the length range should be. I know from NaNoWriMo that I can at least judge if I'm in novel range by comparing to 50,000 words, but how many words is too much for a non-fiction book that's not targeted exclusively to scholars and extreme fans?
 

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Don't go over 100K words. Generally, 70-90K words is considered best for most genres of non-fic.

Also, you're going to analyze fiction? If that means lots of quotes or paraphrasing, you'll need to get permissions and give careful citations.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

ManInBlack

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Thanks!
As for the quotes and paraphrasing, I don't think I'll be doing any more than a lot of "unauthorized" books have done without needing any special permissions, but I'm going to be paying attention to this during the editing process and making any necessary accommodations.
 

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I've worked on several books of this nature, as a ghostwriter and as an editor.

You would be wise to seek authorisation from the copyright holders of the works you're analysing: they might well give you support you hadn't expected.

Even if you don't get their blessing, you will need permission to include every quote you use. Do not try to avoid this; and make sure you get permission to use the quotes in all formats, translations, etc., if you don't want to have to go through the whole rigmarole of permissions again.

ETA: Book lengths are dependent upon genre, publisher... all sorts of variables. I worked for a company which published books of up to 40,000 words. I've worked with publishers which wanted books to be at least 90,000 words. Get a good idea of your market, and that will help you work out the best extent for your book.
 
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ManInBlack

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I'll admit, I had initially blown off the idea of being concerned with quotes (largely because so much of the franchise in question has become meme, and is re-used in hundreds of other sources), but it's definitely something I'll pay close attention to if I choose to include any. Fair Use law should honestly protect any quotes I choose to include, but living in the Youtube age I'm not naive enough to think law will actually protect me from a corporation.
 

veinglory

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If you wish to shelter behind the law you need to know it well and with extreme accuracy, and be able to afford a good lawyer for a protracted period of time. That is why there are some legal threats I have stood firm against, and others I have not even though I was probably in the right.
 
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Old Hack

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I agree with veinglory: she's spot-on.

Fair Use law should honestly protect any quotes I choose to include

You will almost certainly still need permission from all copyright holders to include any quotes if you want a good publisher to take your book on. As the author it'll be your job to do this. Make sure you get the right permissions, and all the permissions you need.
 

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I am in the middle of writing a non fiction book, I am trying to keep it under 100k, but it will be a challenge to do that. However, it is a reference book, and not one to be read cover to cover.
 

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The last non-fiction book I worked on came out at 960 pages, plus index, appendices and front/back matter. Another I co-wrote came in at 117 pages. I've tech edited books that ended up at less than 50 pages. And these are all in the same general category. There is no one-size-fits-all rule of length.

A non-fiction book has to be long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be economical and attract readers. And that depends entirely on the subject matter and its treatment.

Jeff
 

susangpyp

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Both of my book proposals were 75-90k and came in around there (finished product.) But reference books can be higher than that.

Fair Use is an exception to Copyright Law and generally covers commentary, criticism, reporting, research, and scholarship (and a few other things that I'm not remembering at the moment.) I don't know where "unauthorized guides" would fall. I would definitely consult a lawyer before assuming fair use covers what you are doing. If the author of the work thinks you're making money off of it and it doesn't really fit within a Fair Use exception, you could be in trouble.
 

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It is stated here that you should not go over 100,000 words in a nonfiction book. I don't really get that because here are my calculations.

I am using MSWord with narrow margins. I am getting 17 words per line and 42 lines per page. That equals approximately 714 words per page. 100,000/714 = 140 pages. Given that a book has about 37 lines per page and about 13 words per line that will give you 481 words per page divided by 100,000 will give you about 207 book pages.

But it seems to me that the average nonfiction book is about 400 pages so that would mean almost double that amount like about 190,000 words.
 

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Your average nonfiction book is not formatted wall-o-text style without any graphics. I would suggest running an average on a book of like type. Only some texts and reference books would even approach that kind of wordcount. Others, like popular management non-fiction often barely scrape 30,000.
 
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johnharlin

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I don't really see that. Given that an average nonfiction hard cover book is 37 lines per page and 13 words across and say 375 pages without table of contents and index, that equals about 180,000 words. I have counted page lines and words in several books like that and that is what I get. I will go back and take a closer look later on when I get home to be sure I'm right and give you stats of several books in my collection to make sure I am correct.
 

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But what is 'an average non-fiction hard cover book'? Non-fiction covers a huge range of categories from self-help to historical biographies to biology text books.
 

veinglory

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I am not sure what you are deriving that average from. Not the shelves at Barnes and Noble? The last three nonfiction books I bought are on the shelf here. An average of them based on a 3-page estimate would be 70,000ish. The management one being about under 40,000. Even when it comes to textbooks the one I wrote, fairly typically for its type, was under 90,000.
 

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I don't really see that. Given that an average nonfiction hard cover book is 37 lines per page and 13 words across and say 375 pages without table of contents and index, that equals about 180,000 words. I have counted page lines and words in several books like that and that is what I get. I will go back and take a closer look later on when I get home to be sure I'm right and give you stats of several books in my collection to make sure I am correct.

I'm a non-fiction editor and writer with a few decades and lots of books under my belt.

Veinglory is spot-on. Much does depend on the sort of non-fiction being considered but I can assure you that only a very small proportion of the non-fiction books published are as long as 180k. I edited for an imprint which published non-fiction of a maximum of 40,000 words; I've written several books, ranging from 30,000 to 90,000 words. But I've never signed a book, or been commissioned to write one, which was as long as you've suggested.

Rather than giving us stats to prove us wrong, could you instead tell us what genre you're talking about? That would be really helpful.
 

johnharlin

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All right, so here are some of my books.
Other books I have are somewhat more in pages and some are less but what I have here is about the average.
It just seems to me that a good book would be around 350 pages.
without bibliography, table of contents or index.

I have also chosen books in a few different genres to show that the genre doesn't matter.


Biography of Steve McQueen by Penina Spiegel 367 pages, 42 lines per page approx. 13 words per line
13 x 42 x 367 = 200,382 words

Trumped - biography of Donald Trump by John R. O'Donnell, 33 lines per page, 10 words per line
330 words per page times 337 pages without the index = 111,000 words

Richard Burton - A Life by Melvyn Bragg, 43 lines per page, approx 12 words per line = 516 words per page
492 pages, 533 pages if you include appendices and index
492 x 516 = 253,872 words

Sir Francis Drake by John Sugden, 43 lines per page approx. 13 words per line
43 x 13 = 559 words per page
324 pages without glossary, bibliography and index, totol of 353 pages total
324 x 559 = 181,116 words

Roughing It - By Mark Twain
37 lines per page, approx 10 words per line
370 per page and 591 pages
370 x 591 = 218,670 words

Bill Graham Presents by Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield (the rock and roll promoter)
41 lines per page approx 12 words per line
41 x 12 = 492 words per page
545 pages without speakers and index list total pages 568
545 x 492 - 268,140 words

Legend, the life and death of Marilyn Monroe by Fred Lawrence Guiles
39 lines per page and 12 words per line
39 x 12 = 468 words per page
479 pages without sources and index
479 x 468 = 224,172 words

Family Psychopathology edited by Luciano L'Abate
45 lines per page and approx. 11 words per line
495 words per page x 487 pages, 528 pages with sources and index
495 x 487 = 241,065

Overlord (D-Day, June 6, 1944 by Max Hastings
44 lines per page approx 12 words per line
44 x 12 = 528 without notes appendices and index for 368 pages
528 x 320 pages = 168,960 words (note: lots of photos but only battle maps and a few smaller photos were counted as page numbers) so maybe it's only 160,000 words.)

Operation Barbarossa by Bryan I. Fugate (eastern front) in 1941
40 lines per page at 10 words per line
400 per page
400 x 315 pages = 126,000 excluding appendixes, notes, bibliography and index for a total of 414 pages

The Korean War by Donald Knox
38 lines per page and approx 11 words per line
38 x 11 - 418 words per page
418 x 507 = 211,926 without index for a total of 516 pages
 

T Robinson

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You might want to review some other sources on how to determine word count.
 

johnharlin

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Why would I review how to determine Word Count. I know how to add 2+2.

1. I take the number of lines per page multiplied by

2. The number of words per line. I do this by counting the words in a number of lines and comparing. Not every line has the same number of words. I certainly don't take the line with the highest number of words but I don't take the line with the lowest number either. I think I have always chosen a fair number. My purpose is to get as close to an accurate count as possible knowing that there will still be a leeway of a few thousand words.

3. Then I take the number of words per page multiplied by the number of pages in the book. However, I don't count the extra pages for the bibliography, appendixes, notes, index or table of contents. Sometimes those can add up to more than 50 pages.

Are people here getting kind of insecure or something like am I putting fear into people thinking that they have to write a longer book than they thought?

Well, a book is done, when a book is done. There can be no short cuts taken. You do your best for each chapter and take as much data as you can find for it and plug it in. You want to include everything you can find about your topic, length doesn't matter. You can always trim it down later on. I'm so glad I am over those legal cases I had to go through, I really got burned out from it. My next chapter is going a lot easier. There will be more legal cases coming later on but hopefully they won't be so lengthy and complicated. I probably read 300 pages of legal documents not including newspaper articles just to get a 10 page chapter out of it and I had to go over and over and over stuff to co-ordinate the correct details. In court cases, stories through testimony are not told all at once. They are told sporadically and so I had to pull the stuff out from different sections to put it all together and then co-ordinate those details with the newspaper articles. It didn't help either that there were often different versions of the details.
 
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Old Hack

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All right, so here are some of my books.
Other books I have are somewhat more in pages and some are less but what I have here is about the average.
It just seems to me that a good book would be around 350 pages.
without bibliography, table of contents or index.

I have also chosen books in a few different genres to show that the genre doesn't matter.

There are a few problems with your sample. The first and most obvious is that you've taken books from your own shelves. If you have a fondness for longer books, then that means your sample is unreliable. The next is that we don't know how you've chosen these samples: it could be you've purposely looked for longer books to prove your point. And you have to consider when those books were published. I've looked them up and while there might have been earlier editions for some of them, this is what I found:

Biography of Steve McQueen by Penina Spiegel, published 1987

Trumped - biography of Donald Trump by John R. O'Donnell, published 1991

Richard Burton - A Life by Melvyn Bragg, published 1989

Sir Francis Drake by John Sugden, published 1990

Roughing It - By Mark Twain, published 1872

Bill Graham Presents by Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield, published 1992

Legend, the life and death of Marilyn Monroe by Fred Lawrence Guiles, published 1984

Family Psychopathology edited by Luciano L'Abate, published 1997

Overlord (D-Day, June 6, 1944 by Max Hastings, published 2006

Operation Barbarossa by Bryan I. Fugate (eastern front) in 1941, published 1984

The Korean War by Donald Knox, published 1985

If you want to know how to get published in 1997, 1985 or 1872 then by all means use these books as your guide. But I assume you're hoping to find out how to best be published now, in 2015: in which case you're going to need some more contemporary examples, and rely on a sample which is less flawed than this.

Why would I review how to determine Word Count. I know how to add 2+2.

There's more to it than that.

Your word counts are way too high, and I think I've seen at least some of the reason why.

When you work out the word count you count up the average words per line, the average lines per page, and the number of pages, and multiply them together.

To get an accurate count, especially for a longer book, you have to count WPL and LPP over several pages.

Counting the WPL figure is easy. Count the words per line. Count fifty lines, at least. Count them on different pages, in different chapters, and make sure you're not choosing the lines you count because they look right to you: have a system. Because people often choose lines which look fuller or emptier, depending on what they're hoping to find. Completely subconsciously. It's astonishing how regularly this happens.

That LLP figure often trips people up, though, as you have to take into account the white space left by ending paragraphs. So you count the LLP down the centre of the page, not the right or left of the page, and where you pass over the final line of a paragraph you only count the line if there's a word at that point on the page. If there's white space, you don't count it.

Counting pages is another one. Don't rely on the number of pages given in the contents of the book. Count the actual pages. Count at around the half-way point (vertically) and when you reach the end of a chapter, if the words end above this point then don't count the page. Make an allowance for chapter beginnings too: count up how many chapters there are, work out what proportion of the page is blank at the start of each chapter, and multiply the two together. This should give you the number of pages to lose off your total to take into account this blank space.

As you've already said, ignore appendices, endnotes or footnotes, and other extraneous material.

Are people here getting kind of insecure or something like am I putting fear into people thinking that they have to write a longer book than they thought?

No. We can see you're doing this wrong and we're trying to help you, so that you can do better for yourself.

Non-fiction is my business. I've worked as an editor and writer for over thirty years now. I've had over forty books published; I've edited lots of books and have signed up a lot too. I know the word-counts you're coming up with are not what's required.

Well, a book is done, when a book is done. There can be no short cuts taken. You do your best for each chapter and take as much data as you can find for it and plug it in. You want to include everything you can find about your topic, length doesn't matter. You can always trim it down later on. I'm so glad I am over those legal cases I had to go through, I really got burned out from it. My next chapter is going a lot easier. There will be more legal cases coming later on but hopefully they won't be so lengthy and complicated. I probably read 300 pages of legal documents not including newspaper articles just to get a 10 page chapter out of it and I had to go over and over and over stuff to co-ordinate the correct details. In court cases, stories through testimony are not told all at once. They are told sporadically and so I had to pull the stuff out from different sections to put it all together and then co-ordinate those details with the newspaper articles. It didn't help either that there were often different versions of the details.

It sounds like you're doing your research thoroughly and diligently. I wish more writers did this. It will improve the quality of your final book. But be aware that publishers will struggle to publish a book which is significantly longer than the norm: not only are they more costly to edit, they are more costly to produce and distribute. More pages = more paper and ink; bulkier books are more expensive to ship to bookshops; and they take up more space on bookshop shelves, so bookshops aren't so keen on them. Bookshops like to have variety on their shelves and unless a book is exceptional they'll be reluctant to stock it if it takes up the space of two of a more usual length.

You obviously need to have a beginning, middle and end to your book: you can't end it halfway through the story. But might it be possible for you to split it into more than one book, so that you can include all this detail and not have to worry about cutting it in ways which would diminish it?
 

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The thing is, I'm a little uncertain as to what the length range should be.

The length should be that which covers the material in your outline and fits within the length of similar published works.

There's no real trick to the book length in non-fiction. Other work published will give you a strong idea of what a good general length is and your outline will tell you what needs to be covered. The only magic is adjusting the scope of the work to fit within the general length that makes the work publishable.

Of course, if you need more space to complete the work, then use it.

Jeff
 

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I think you might have over-estimated by a considerable amount the number of words in Roughing It.

You're right. I have a copy of ROUGHING IT in Word document form... it's 172,500, substantially shorter (about 45,000 words) than the poster's 218,670.