The short answer: an average adult reads fiction at roughly 240–260 words per minute, so a typical 300-page novel (about 80,000–90,000 words) takes 5 to 6 hours of reading. Your own speed may be very different — that's what the calculator is for.
Reading time calculatorHow long will your next book take? Enter pages or words and your speed.
Open calculator →Reading speed
A large 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert put the average silent reading rate of English-speaking adults at about 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction. Fast readers comfortably reach 350–400 wpm; careful readers of dense prose may sit at 150–200. Speed-reading claims beyond about 600 wpm usually come with a sharp drop in comprehension.
How many words are on a page?
It depends on trim size, font and layout, but a common estimate for a trade paperback is 250–300 words per page. Mass-market paperbacks with small type can exceed 350.
How long are books?
| Category | Typical word count |
|---|---|
| Flash fiction | under 1,000 |
| Short story | 1,000–7,500 |
| Novelette | 7,500–17,500 |
| Novella | 17,500–40,000 |
| Category romance | 50,000–75,000 |
| Single-title romance | 70,000–100,000 |
| Typical adult novel | 70,000–110,000 |
| Epic fantasy | 110,000–200,000+ |
Romance novels vary widely: short category romances run 50,000–60,000 words, single-title romances 70,000–100,000, and fantasy and romantasy often exceed 120,000.
Audiobooks
Narrators usually read at around 150–160 words per minute, so audiobooks take longer than silent reading — roughly 9–10 hours for an 85,000-word novel. Many listeners speed playback to 1.25× or 1.5×. Our free audiobooks list shows the running time of each LibriVox recording.