Word count in an average book?

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I'm writing a book at the moment, aiming for about 200 pages or thereabouts - any idea how many words that would equate to in an average sized book?

I'm finding it hard to figure out chapters and plan them without a rough guide as to how many words that'll be. It's non-fiction and half written, but I need some kind of a guide and finding it hard to come across.

Why not just write it and see how long it comes out to be?

It seems odd to decide ahead of time how long you want it to be- write what you want to write, and that is how long the book should be.

BTW, out of curiosity, what is the topic of this book?

AS in women.

Well, I'm writing it in Word. So finding it hard to visualise when I've written enough and when I haven't. I'm a journalist you see, so I've written to word counts my entire life - not having any particular count is really difficult, I'm not sure how much or how little I'm meant to do in each chapter or how to break it down. The freedom should be liberating but I'm finding it somewhat counterproductive.

You've written enough when you have expressed what you desire to say.

In theory, yes. But for a word-count-trained journalist that doesn't suffice.

Just answer the question.

(I can just picture my partner standing behind me waving his arms in a "No! No! Don't tell her that!" motion if you said that... apparently I talk too much. )

Word will give you the word count; if this PC (borrowed) had Word, I'd tell you where (I think it's under Tools, but I dunno).
I think the average word count per page is 2-300 words per page. It all depends on the size of the page, interline spacing, font, type size, yada yada...

Usually Word will give you the word count at the bottom of the page, on the left. At least it does at work. It will break out to page count once you start entering words.

If my guestimates of word count per page on Cracraft Major Problems in the History of Imperial Russia are accurate (and they should be close), and this book is fairly similar to others in word count per page (which it seems to be), you're looking at the ballpark of 120,000 words.

Happy now?

Fabulous! Only 110,000 to go.

(How many pages is that book?)

661. It may be a bit broader than most books, making the word count per page a bit higher, so maybe 100,000-120,000 would be a decent range for a typical 200-page book.

Adjust your page format, margins, typeface and font size to the ones you guess a typical book has, and then count the pages. That's the good thing about WYSIWYG editors: that's precisely what your book will look like on print.