What's your word count?

I am constantly asked by authors how big their book should be and how many words should they write.

This often seems to be a barrier to people even putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) thinking that they will never have time to write a book.

The average paperback page takes around 250-300 words so a hundred page book would be in the region of 25,000 to 30,000 words – as a rule of thumb as there are many parameters to take into consideration like font size, leading and images of course.

Well my old guitar said to me once, “It’s not the notes but the gaps between the notes.”

I took this on board when I wrote my first book, 100 Years of Ermintrude, which incidentally weighed in at only 15,000 words. Each page or ‘chapter’ is just four stanzas long and augmented by imagery. The book is designed so the reader fills in their own gaps and is all the stronger for it.

Since then I’ve written three non-fiction books with 30k words, 40k words and 20k words respectively.

In each case, my main consideration was not my perception of how many words I should write to give my work gravitas or to make me look good.

What I considered was this:

1. In Blocks, my book on writer’s block, I didn’t want to write a big book as people with blocks would find that a barrier so I kept it so it could be read one chapter a day over a couple of weeks (at the outside) – with chapter lengths no more than 2000 words or less than 1200 words.

2. In my new book on Light Bulb Moments, my Mind Map dictated I had 18 topics to cover and I wanted each chapter to take me less than a day to write and for the reader to be able to take in easily in one reading – so 18 x 2000 or so comes to 40k words by the time it’s topped and tailed. Each chapter is also summarised in about 150 words or 3-4 bullet points for those skim readers amongst us (including me).

3. In my even newer book, Flavours of Thought, I had 2 x 21 ‘chapters’ and I wanted each ‘chapter’ to fit on no more than 2 pages. The idea here is that it could be read in a commute to and from work or in a couple of sittings. The Kindle version has a hyperlinked set of indexes for easy reference on subsequent readings – this is a book readers seem to want to come back to.

Now in for the first two cases, my publishers didn’t put any constraints or stipulations or guidelines on word count (I hear some do, especially when you fit into a series or write fiction) – for the latter case, I self-published so it was totally my call.

In all cases though, I had the discipline to stop from writing War and Peace. All the books could have been much bigger and I could still be writing them but the other stuff I have to say will be in the sequels!!

In summary – the most important factors are what you want to say and what your readers want and need to read – don’t be influenced by those that want 100k words plus !!

If you want to learn how to be really impact-full in your writing and with your words, come along to the You Only Have 1 Second series of workshops starting on the 1st November … details and booking here

We’ll be teaching the power of hypnotic language and how to make your headlines, book titles and tweets eye- and mind-catching. You’ll also learn how to write words that make a page turner.

Useful Links:

100 Years of Ermintrude

Blocks

The Art and Science of Light Bulb Moments

Flavours of Thought: Recipes for Fresh Thinking