Find the word count for published YA and children’s books

Have you ever wondered how many words are in a published YA or children’s book? I have. Children’s and YA writers, especially, may want to know this, to compare their own manuscripts to those of other writers, especially in particular genres. Book reviewers may also be interested to see whether the book they’re reading falls in the same general length as similar books, or if it’s very different. Or maybe you’re just curious. Curious is good.

There are some easy ways to find the word count for a published book–online bookstores. There are at least two that provide word count.

One is the online bookstore Renaissance Learning. It is, I think, the easiest to use to quickly find the word count of a book.

The other is Amazon.com(not Amazon.ca)–but it only works with books that have the “Search Inside” feature.

To find the word count at Amazon.com for a particular book, search the book’s title, and click on it. Then scroll down to “Inside this book”, then “New!” then “Text Stats”. Easy pe

I found that great tip at Miss Snark, in the comments section. I hope you find it as useful as I do!

February 10th, 2008