Book Lengths Over the Years

Book Lengths Over the Years

By Ray Tabler

Since writing my first novel, the subject of word counts has haunted me. In short, I struggle to write long books. This is a problem these days, because long books are in vogue. Publishers prefer word counts north of 80,000. The farther north the better. Why? Don’t ask me. I just type here.

There’s no use fighting City Hall, or the people who keep the gate and pay the bills. So, I write until there is no more story to tell. Which usually appears to be around 60,000 words, for me. Then I strap my creation down to the rack and painfully ratchet the poor thing to meet requirements. It is an unpleasant experience for all concerned.

I had always heard rumors that word counts of novels didn’t used to be so high. Ah, the good old days. Was that true? Thus motivated, I clapped on my pith helmet, and embarked upon an internet safari to find out. To my surprise, there is not much hard information on the subject. At least not much the cheap side of paywalls. However, I did find a list of word counts of “most-read” books, at capitalizemyname.com. (Many thanks to Bobby Kania for gathering and posting the information.) After loading the word counts to a spreadsheet and typing in the publication dates of each book, I graphed the result.

In the words of Yogi Berra, “You can see a lot by just lookin’.” What can be seen by just looking at the graph above is that the story is more complicated than I expected. Yes, average word counts of novels used to be (100 years ago) a lot lower than they are today. And, before that, they were just as high as they are now. To focus the analysis, I zoomed in, shortening the time frame to the last 200 years and capping the graph at 300,000 words. That summarily ignores a small number of literary behemoths with ambitions of corralling a million words between two covers. Forgive me War & Peace, and Atlas Shrugged. The zoomed-in graph is below.

What jumps out us is the dramatic dip in word counts after about 1875, bottoming out at 1925-1930, then rapidly climbing as the Great Depression closed in. It’s striking. For maybe 20 years, hardly anything longer than 80,000 words rose to prominence, at least according to this data set. I am at a loss to explain this word count roller coaster. In all likelihood, there were (and are) several interacting causes at work. Probably fertile ground for a PhD thesis in English literature (or three) for the plowing. If they don’t already exist, smirking at me on the far sides of paywalls.

Is there a cyclicity implied in this data? Are we teetering on the brink of another steep drop off in novel word counts? Critics have been wailing about the social media-induced reduction in attention span for years now. Will novels contract to fit within that atrophied ability to focus on a story? Maybe. I wouldn’t hold my breath. There’s a story strapped down to the rack, and I need to get cranking.

Details, caveats, and weasel words: Some (many?) may quibble with the criteria employed for “most-read.” You are free to do so, and I encourage the interested reader to gather and analyze their own data. I’m eager to see what you come up with. I have at least heard of almost all of the books in the data set. To facilitate further acrimonious debate, the list is provided below.

I arbitrarily excluded religious texts, like the Bible, the Koran, and others from the analysis. The purpose of these books is to save souls, not make money. And this also has the advantage of sidestepping the controversy which would arise from lumping holy books in with works of fiction. 😏 Besides, the x-axis already spans 350 years. No point in stretching it to a couple of millennia.

The page count of the secondary y-axis was derived by dividing the word count by 280 words per page, a figure I found online. Please adjust to 250 or 300, if you prefer.

END.

Data set:

Source: https://capitalizemytitle.com/famous-book-series-and-novel-word-counts/

Book	Pub Year	Words	Pages
A Suitable Boy	1993	591,554	2113
War and Peace	1869	587,287	2097
Atlas Shrugged	1957	561,996	2007
Gone With the Wind	1936	418,053	1493
Lonesome Dove	1985	365,712	1306
Brothers Karmazov	1879	364,153	1301
Anna Karenina	1878	349,736	1249
Middlemarch	1872	316,059	1129
The Fountainhead	1943	311,596	1113
Cloudsplitter	1998	260,742	931
Order of the Phoenix	2003	257,154	918
A Prayer for Owen Meany	1989	236,061	843
East of Eden	1952	225,395	805
Amazing Advertures of Kavelier & Clay	2000	216,020	772
Crime and Punishment	1866	211,591	756
Midnight’s Children	1981	208,773	746
Moby Dick	1851	206,052	736
A House for Mr. Biswas	1961	198,901	710
Deathly Hallows	2007	198,227	708
Stones from the River	1994	197,517	705
The Corrections	2001	196,774	703
Goblet of Fire	2000	190,858	682
Memoirs of a Geisha	1997	186,418	666
Jane Eyre	1847	183,858	657
Little Women	1869	183,833	657
Great Expectations	1861	183,349	655
The Poisonwood Bible	1998	177,679	635
Fellowship of the Ring	1954	177,227	633
Catch 22	1961	174,269	622
Grapes of Wrath	1939	169,481	605
Half Blood Prince	2005	169,441	605
White Teeth	2000	169,389	605
Uncle Tom’s Cabin	1852	166,622	595
Cold Mountain	1997	161,511	577
The Kitchen God’s Wife	1991	159,276	569
Alias Grace	1996	157,665	563
Watership Down	1972	156,154	558
Oilver Twist	1838	155,960	557
Emma	1816	155,887	557
Last of the Mohicans	1826	145,469	520
Cold Sassy Tree	1984	145,265	519
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn	1943	145,092	518
100 Years of Solitude	1967	144,523	516
The Two Towers	1954	143,436	512
20000 Leagues Under the Sea	1870	138,138	493
Snow Falling on Cedars	1994	138,098	493
Moll Flanders	1722	138,087	493
Tale of Two Cities	1859	135,420	484
Schindler’s List	1982	134,710	481
Return of the King	1955	134,462	480
War Trash	2004	130,460	466
The Yearling	1938	128,886	460
Life on the Mississippi	1883	127,776	456
Atonement	2001	123,378	441
My Sister’s Keeper	2004	119,529	427
Sense & Sensibility	1811	119,394	426
The Tenth Circle	2006	114,779	410
Walden	1854	114,634	409
The Golden Compass	1995	112,815	403
McTeague	1899	112,737	403
Huckleberry Finn	1885	109,571	391
Wuthering Heights	1847	107,945	386
Gilliver’s Travels	1726	107,349	383
Prisoner of Azkaban	1999	106,821	382
A Distant Shore	2003	103,090	368
Ender’s Game	1985	100,609	359
To Kill A Mocking Bird	1960	100,388	359
Welcome to the Monkey House	1968	99,560	356
All the Pretty Horses	1992	99,277	355
Anne of Green Gables	1908	97,364	348
The Hobbit	1937	95,022	339
Song of Solomon	1977	92,400	330
Joy Luck Club	1989	91,419	326
Waiting	1999	89,297	319
1984	1949	88,942	318
Persuasion	1818	87,978	314
Pere Goirot	1835	87,846	314
The Unbearable Lightness of Being	1984	85,199	304
Gilead	2004	84,845	303
Chamber of Secrets	1998	84,799	303
Cry the Beloved Country	1948	83,774	299
Diary of Anne Frank	1952	82,762	296
The English Paient	1992	82,370	294
The Dark Is Rising	1973	82,143	293
The Secret Garden	1911	80,398	287
Picture of Dorian Gray	1890	78,462	280
The Philosopher’s Stone	1997	77,325	276
Catcher in the Rye	1951	73,404	262
White Fang	1906	72,071	257
Woman Warrior	1976	70,957	253
Tom Sawyer	1876	69,066	247
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere	2003	68,410	244
Sun Also Rises	1926	67,707	242
Ironweed	1983	67,606	241
The Fault in Our Stars	2012	67,203	240
Treasure Island	1883	66,950	239
The Color Purple	1982	66,556	238
The Martian Chronicles	1950	64,768	231
Brave New World	1932	63,766	228
The Scarlet Letter	1850	63,604	227
Mrs. Dalloway	1925	63,422	227
All Quiet on the Western Front	1929	61,922	221
The Dew Breaker	2004	60,082	215
Lord of the Flies	1954	59,900	214
Black Beauty	1877	59,635	213
Wind in the Willows	1908	58,428	209
A Separate Peace	1959	56,787	203
As I Lay Dying	1930	56,695	202
The Hours	1998	54,243	194
Slaughterhouse 5	1969	49,459	177
The Outsiders	1967	48,523	173
The Red Badge of Courage	1895	47,180	169
The Great Gatsby	1925	47,094	168
Farenheit 451	1953	46,118	165
The Tequilla Worm	2005	42,715	153
The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe	1950	36,363	130
Old Yeller	1956	35,968	128
Charlie & the Chocolate Factory	1964	30,644	109
The Mouse & the Motorcycle	1965	22,416	80

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