I almost never go to movies that are longer than two hours, because I know the movie will become a $12 nap. I am similarly reluctant to buy books with more than about 350 pages, because I doubt they will keep me interested.
In an online forum for authors, a newbie recently discussed his debut novel -- which will have more than 800 pages.
- It will be extremely difficult to persuade people to buy a huge and expensive book written by someone they've never heard of.
The maximum number of pages for a book is determined by printing and binding equipment (if the book is printed) and what people are willing to pay, carry and read..
Most printers can produce books with as many as 800 to 1,000 pages, but books with more than 500 pages are unusual. With nonfiction, you need to have enough pages to cover your topic adequately. Don’t skimp, or pad.
- The book should not be so big that it will be priced a lot higher than its competitors or seem like “too much to read.”
- It should not be so short that it seems incomplete, or doesn’t offer value for its cost.
The form of a book affects the acceptability
of its size. A printed book with 600 pages could be heavy to carry and
difficult to lay flat (and expensive to print and ship).
The cost of each additional page printed is insignificant. The cost of each e-page is zero. There is a prejudice against very thin books, so try for a minimum of about 120 pages. Thin books just don’t seem like real books, and the printing on the book’s spine will be tiny.
The cost of each additional page printed is insignificant. The cost of each e-page is zero. There is a prejudice against very thin books, so try for a minimum of about 120 pages. Thin books just don’t seem like real books, and the printing on the book’s spine will be tiny.
Novels can be much longer than nonfiction. Tolstoy’s War and Peace is about 1,300 pages long,
and some of Rowling’s Harry Potter books have over 700 pages.
A book’s page count is not final until it
is ready to be printed. Many factors determine how many words fit on a page,
including page size, type size, line spacing, margins, headers, number and size
of illustrations, front and back matter, etc.
An 8.5-by-11-inch manuscript page holds about twice as many
words as a common 6-by-9-inch book page. A
200-page manuscript can yield a 400-page book (with no graphics), and have
about 100,000 words.
Most ebooks don’t have real pages. I know of one ebook with just nine “pages” and one with
1,594 -- unless the person reading makes an adjustment which changes the total.
- With most ebooks, the readers can adjust typeface, type size and vertical/horizontal orientation. That changes the number of apparent pages. A hundred people could read a particular ebook, but they’re not necessarily reading the same book.

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