What it means
Word count is how the trade measures a book's length before it is typeset. Pages are a property of the printed object — change the trim size, typeface or leading and the page count moves — so agents, publishers and contests set their limits in words.
The conventions by category are well established. An adult novel usually runs 70,000–100,000 words; epic fantasy and historical fiction stretch to 120,000; young adult sits around 50,000–80,000; middle grade 30,000–55,000. A memoir or narrative nonfiction typically lands between 60,000 and 90,000, and a practical nonfiction book between 40,000 and 70,000. NaNoWriMo's famous target of 50,000 is a short novel.
To estimate pages, most typesetters assume roughly 250–300 words per page at a 6 × 9 in trade trim in a normal book face, so an 80,000-word novel becomes about 280–320 pages before front and back matter.
In Bindery
Bindery sizes the spine from the real typeset page count rather than from a words-per-page estimate, so the printed book matches its files.
Make the book, not the checklist
Describe a book or upload a manuscript. Bindery writes with you, typesets in LaTeX, sizes the spine from the real page count and produces printer-validated files — the watermarked proof is always free.
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