Calculate number of words in an eBook ?

Literature & Writing Writer's Block
1

Hi,

I am trying to get an idea how many words I should aim for in my book. I have a number of ePub books in my Calibre library that I want to use as a guide but I cannot find anywhere on the web that will help me find how many words are in those ePub books. I though there would be some nice and simple way…

Anyone ?

2

Convert them to TXT format and then run them through "wc -l " on the command line, or open the converted files with a word processor and count them that way?

Or search out submission guidelines from major publishers of your genre/demographic category and use that instead. Book 7 in the Harry Potter series is not an acceptable length for a first YA novel, for instance, so relying on the word counts of works by established authors may not be a good idea. Similarly, there are classics that are far too short for their respective markets by today’s standards.

3

There’s a plugin for Calibre called “Count Pages” that will also count words (for epub & mobi).

There’s a “how to guide” on this site.

4

Thanks Jot - I spent an hour trying to get that to work without any success. Also it doesn’t actually count the words afaik, it only estimates.