Say I have a 100 page manuscript in Courier, 11pt, double-spaced. How many paperback pages is this roughly equivalent to? Is there a better font/spacing to use?
Answer
The standard font that I've seen in my experience has been Times New Roman 12pt with 1.5 spacing.
Honestly, there is no way to calculate how many pages your book will be until the publisher does all of their unique formatting and prints the book. Books are printed in all different sizes - some large, some small. Publishers also use different margin sizes- some like 1 inch all around, others like 1 inch on the sides and .5 in the headers. It varies from publisher to publisher. Some publishers also use different fonts.
Even Fox Cutter's estimate is 250 words per page isn't useful. If you have a lot of dialog, you may have pages with a lot less than 250 words on them. If you're a wordy writer, you may have pages with a lot more than that. Even the complexity of the words you use affects how many words are on a page. You 50,000 word manuscript may be half the page length of another authors 50,000 word manuscript.
The short answer: Don't worry about page length. Worry about word length. That doesn't change no matter how the book is formatted.
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