Kindle Word-To-Page Count Thoughts

It's a great mystery as to how Kindle and the Amazon storefront estimates page count when you upload your Kindle book to KDP.

Page count is relative. In the era of digital eReaders where the audience can adjust the text size, spacing, margins and fonts, the actual type-set pages that we would normally judge a book on for length are becoming obsolete unless you have a physical edition that you are converting to Kindle. For myself, I end up going the opposite - taking my Kindle version and converting it for print using Scrivener with the correct layout and dimensions for CreateSpace. I was very pleased with how my first book came out and I'm sure that I will definitely use CreateSpace again in the near future. Check out the image below of how my physical book came out.

Back to the initial post topic - I've got some estimates based on my own work that might help with your own dilemmas of figuring out how "long" your book is once you upload it to KDP.

For my shorter work, about 8,000 or so words, KDP estimated my book was roughly 41 pages. This includes an internal cover and title page with table of contents. Not bad for a short book. I also recently finished up a short prequel story to my Macyntire & Hough novel that was just shy of 7,000 words, and KDP estimated this as being 32 pages long, again, including cover, title page, and table of contents.

While it's not exact, that equals roughly 218 words per page. Pretty close to my estimate of 250 words for my own calculations.

If you're really concerned with readers being unaware of how long your book is, you can always put in the description how many words (approximately) the book is. The tech-savvy readers will pick up on that and hopefully be more tempted to give you work a chance.

Word Count Madness

I have reached another milestone with my novel in progress. Yesterday I sat down and typed out all the handwritten pages I've penned during stolen moments waiting in lines, closing up at my job, and also sitting at the kitchen table. I now have approximately 45,000 words in my manuscript!

True, this I only a first draft. I can already tell that the book will need to have a lot of attention when it comes to tightening the sentences and deleting unnecessary words. I'm guilty of rambling in some places and not describing enough in others. Yet, this word count is a way to judge how far along I am. A typical 200 page book is around 50,000 words. I'm drafting the finale and other crucial chapters now, and I still have a while to go. I can't rush, but I don't want to drag my feet. It does feel more encouraging as I can now see the missing gaps and just have to fill them in. The characters tell me what they need, and it gets typed into the manuscript.

I admire those writers able to create 5,000 words a day. I've tried, but I'm not quite there yet. Perhaps with more mental stretching I will get there soon. Now that I've taken a break from writing the book, I suppose it's time to get back to work!