Sunday, March 18, 2012

More on word counts

My last post offered a list of suggested word counts for particular genres. But what if you'd like to know the exact word count of a published novel?

For children's books, check out the Renaissance Learning web site [thanks to Cheryl Rainfield for this tip!]. You can search by individual Title, by Recommended Reading Lists, or by Popular Groupings. Click on the link for the book title, which will take you to a page that lists info including number of pages, reading book level, and word count.

[Note: this next part has been amended] It is more difficult to find word counts for adult fiction...
  • FYI (so you won't waste your time on this): Amazon Help says that its Search Inside the Book allows "text stats" searches, but it doesn't seem to work anymore.
  • Indefeasible blog has a post that lists the word counts for famous works: Great Novels and Word Count (the author said he compiled them using English teachers' web sites)
  • Just for fun, check out the Wikipedia page, List of longest novels

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