How To Calculate Pages in an Ebook – The Productive Indie Fiction Writer

Very rarely do I need to calculate the number of pages in an eBook.

Most of the time, indie authors only care about the size of the file, and the number of words in the story itself (sans front and back matter).

Besides, calculating pages in an eBook is an exercise in frustration; depending on the size of the font the reader uses, the size of the font you provide, and the size of the screen being used to read the book, the number of “pages” can change from moment to moment.

Occasionally, though, you might find it necessary to know the number of standard pages in an eBook.

In the past, when I needed this figure, I used to guess; based upon the word count of the novel, divided by 250 to arrive at the traditional print page count — plus a few extra pages for front and end matter.

Is there a formula for calculating the average number of pages? A thumb rule that lets you compare oranges to oranges?

Turns out, there is.

While I can’t think of a single other retailer or outlet that requires you provide the number of pages in your eBook, tolino, the German eBook and print distributor, does. (tolino does not capitalize their company name).

Google Play Books also asks for a page count: I’ve always used the print page count for this.

However, I’ve just begun distributing German language novels via tolino, and had to ask for their help in determining the page count for my eBooks.

They gave me the formula they use. They arrived at this forumula after averaging out character counts versus pages over a vast number of books, and arrived at this working average:

Number of characters (including spaces)

Divided by 2,200 =

number of pages.

The easiest way to determine the number of characters, including space, that you have in your ebook, is to open the Word file that was imported into your ebook application. Word will give you the character count with or without spaces.

Look for the word count and/or the character count in the status bar at the bottom of the Word window. Tap on either of them and a box will pop up: