Support for Indie Authors discussion

Hi,

So I uploaded my book, Give it Back, for pre-order on Amazon (KDP). On my word document it says that my book is 290 pages (so far). When I sent my manuscript in the print-length showed 246 pages. I haven't formatted my manuscript yet, but I did set the interior like a normal book-sized page. Is this something to be worried about? I don't want my book to show 246 pages, it feels like it's too short. My novel is almost 70k words. When I do format the interior, will this change? Or is the Kindle-settings fixed? This will be my first novel, so I'm not familiar with this process.

If you hover your cursor over the page length on Amazon this pops up: "The estimated length is calculated using the number of page turns on a Kindle, using settings to closely represent a physical book."

So depending on the settings for your preview, it will show larger or smaller page counts. For example, on an iPad an ebook may have 100 pages, but if you view the same ebook on an iPhone the pages could jump to 200 or more because the screen is much smaller. I wouldn't be too worried about the page count.

Okay thank you so much,!

The general rule of thumb is that one manuscript page is equal to 250 words. That would put your page count at around 280 pages. It does seem that 246 pages is rather low. (Don't go by your Microsoft Word document's page count - that's not very accurate, because formatting can vary widely.)

Amazon has their own formula for determining the approximate "page count" of an e-book. In my case, it wasn't quite right either. Amazon said my e-book was equivalent to 401 pages, when in reality (in paperback), it's 435 pages. I wouldn't worry too much about it. You can always e-mail the KDP support group and talk to them about it - I've found them to be responsive and helpful.

But overall, don't worry too much. You can always include the actual word count in your book description on your Amazon book page.

And this will be different to my physical book tho? For print on demand?

Thank you April, I'm stressing about this, and I know I shouldn't since my word count is 68-70k right now.

Danielle wrote: "And this will be different to my physical book tho? For print on demand?"

Once you have a physical book, the product page will show the actual page count for both paperback and kindle version (once they've been merged) but the page count for KU (if you enroll) will be different based in how they average pages read.

Danielle wrote: "And this will be different to my physical book tho? For print on demand?"

Hi, Danielle. Don't stress about this. If you create a paperback - via print on demand - your print book will show the actual page count of your paperback. You can't really control how Amazon estimates the "page count" of your e-book.

I would reassure you on a different level.

Forget about the page count all together. Focus on the best story possible.

I have seen people manipulate page counts in various ways like margins, paragraph indents, font sizes and worst of all padding a story.

Page count matter far less than readers enjoyment (and reviews).

Print on demand depends on three things:
1) Are you double-spaced or single spaced.
2) the size of your font.
3) The size of your page margins.
4) size of the pages, for instance mine was 6"X9".

The minimum cost to you customers is set by Create Space for the number of printed pages you have. My book was right over 137,000 words. I wanted the lowest possible print cost for my customers, so I chose 6"X9", 1/2" margins, single space, 11 PT font size. (Right, I crammed as much as I could in the smallest space.) Minimum retail cost for my 312 pages book is $11.48 on Amazon. If I were to make bigger margins, bigger font, etc.. It goes way up.

With 70K words, you have the opposite issue. However, I found that expanding the margin to one inch even with single space and 6"X9", you get about 230 pages.

I like my paperback reader to get the best price available, but I echo Martin's sentiment here. Don't fill your book with fluff to get word count up. Make each word count, and write for the reader's enjoyment.

Yes I agree, I won't add unnecessarily details. The size of the pages on Microsoft Word is 6" x 9" (I can perhaps make this smaller), my font is 12 pt, and margins is

top and bottom: 1"
Left and right: 0.9"
Gutter: 0"

Still need to format the headings which will take more space too!

Danielle wrote: "Thank you April, I'm stressing about this, and I know I shouldn't since my word count is 68-70k right now."

Danielle,
My already short 150 page hardcover turned into 96 pages on my Nook. THAT was upsetting but its just the way its setup...nothing was missing.

Kindle Direct normalizes page count, at least if it is in a normal format. It can be a bit dis-concerning for sure.

Normally the KDP page count is bigger compared to word, at least I thought so.

My story:
My book needed to use the textbook creator so that the text and graphics stayed put. The page count was set. Kindle accepted what I told them.

I found out that books of similar word lengths had about double the normalized page count of my book because of this. (Mine was also hard to read because of this on some devices.)

Needless to say, the new version I released uses much smaller pages, and the page count is now double what it was on KDP.

I may have stumbled upon the new 'Short story gets more royalties' thing from Kindle's past that Amazon stomped out with price per page.

I dictated the amount of pages in my book. I get paid based on the number of pages I made, not what KDP decides the page count is.

I don't want to alarm anyone, but I might have broken Kindle.

C.B. wrote: "I don't want to alarm anyone, but I might have broken Kindle."

Oh it was you! No wonder the past week has been terrible. I'm not alarmed, I'm relieved. Thanks for breaking Kindle. When they fix it I might have movement on my KENP graph to look forward to. :)