Reading Time
Calculator
How long will readers live inside your book?
Enter your word count or paste your text to instantly see reading times for slow, average, and fast readers. Includes daily session breakdowns and a comparison against published titles in your genre.
Every writer wonders whether their manuscript is the right length. Agents and editors know the answer by genre, category, and market position. This tool gives you theirs.
Enter your word count or paste your text and get average, slow, and fast reading times alongside genre-specific length benchmarks. Find out how your manuscript compares to published titles in your category before you query. A practical tool for writers working toward submission at any stage.
Our courses and coaching cover pacing, structure, and the craft of writing prose that keeps readers turning pages.
Join working writers getting weekly craft guidance, new tool announcements, and course updates from Writers' CLC in Reading, MA.
Everything runs in your browser. When you paste your work, it never leaves your device. We do not store, log, transmit, or read your writing. You own it completely, before and after you use this tool.
This tool uses rule-based pattern matching and established craft criteria, not a language model. That means the feedback is transparent, consistent, and based on principles you can look up and verify. If it flags something, you can see exactly why.
The criteria behind this tool draw from the foundational texts of the craft: John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction, Robert McKee's Story, and the practical workshop traditions these works inform. The Writers' CLC instructors contributed to the criteria development.
These tools identify patterns. They do not make creative decisions. A flag is a prompt to look at a sentence more carefully, not a mandate to change it. The best use of any diagnostic tool is to notice patterns, then apply your own judgment about what serves the work.
Word Count by Genre: Industry Standards
Word count is one of the first signals agents and editors use to assess professional awareness. Too far outside these ranges raises questions before the first page is read.
| Genre | Standard Range | Sweet Spot | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Literary Fiction | 70,000 to 110,000 | 80,000 to 95,000 | Can run longer for established authors. Under 70k is typically considered a novella. |
| Commercial Fiction | 70,000 to 100,000 | 80,000 to 90,000 | Tighter range. Pacing expectations are high. |
| Thriller / Mystery | 65,000 to 90,000 | 70,000 to 85,000 | Pacing drives word count down. Cozy mysteries run shorter. |
| Memoir | 70,000 to 100,000 | 75,000 to 90,000 | Narrative arc matters more than page count, but agents expect a full arc. |
| Fantasy / Sci-Fi | 90,000 to 150,000 | 100,000 to 120,000 | Epic fantasy can run longer. Debuts at 150k or above face significant resistance. |
| Romance | 55,000 to 100,000 | 60,000 to 90,000 | Sub-genre dependent. Category romance runs shorter; single-title runs longer. |
Frequently Asked Questions
The average adult reads 200 to 300 words per minute for pleasure reading. Committed book readers tend toward 250 to 350 wpm. Slow readers and new readers run 150 to 200 wpm. This tool uses 200, 275, and 400 wpm as the three benchmarks.
Commercial fiction chapters typically run 1,500 to 4,000 words (6 to 15 minutes of reading). Literary fiction chapters vary more widely. The real question is whether each chapter ends with enough forward momentum to bring the reader back. Length follows function.
Less so for digital editions, but it still matters for print (spine width affects retail presence) and for reader expectations by genre. A romance novel at 35,000 words will feel short to romance readers. A thriller at 130,000 will feel bloated. Genre conventions exist because readers have internalized them.
Beyond word count, the real signals are structural: do subplots resolve? Does every scene advance the story or character? Are there passages you are attached to that the story does not need? Most debut manuscripts run 10 to 20 percent too long. If you are well above the genre sweet spot, look for structural redundancy before trimming prose.
