

Ask HN: how do I find the word-count of novels? - resdirector

I'm going to write a book (with a friend).  But I don't know how many words to write.  I know the type of book we want to write: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Died_with_a_Felafel_in_His_Hand.  But I don't know how many words these types of novels are.  10,000 words?  20,000?  40,000?  Is there a web-app that returns the word count?  Amazon?  Google Books?
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RiderOfGiraffes
I've just pulled a novel off the shelf behind me. It has about 200 pages, each
line has about 35 or 40 lines, each line has 10 to 15 words.

    
    
      35 x 15 = 525
      38 x 13 = 494
      40 x 11 = 440
    

It's about 450 words per page, 200 pages, 900x100 = 90,000 words.

A second novel pulled out at random has 330 pages of 38 lines with 12
words/line.

The better answer is - as many as it takes.

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resdirector
Clickable:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Died_with_a_Felafel_in_His_H...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Died_with_a_Felafel_in_His_Hand)

