“Bro, can you edit my novel? It’s like 150 pages…How much would that cost?”

“I can sure take a look at it,” I reply. “If it’s 150 pages, that won’t take me too long. It shouldn’t cost much.”

One of the occupational hazards of being an editor is that everyone wants you to edit their manuscript. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love editing and being able to help friends and family out with their projects. The trouble comes when they’re not in the industry and we’re not speaking the same language.

When someone tells me their manuscript is 150 pages, I do some quick mental math—who am I kidding, I open the calculator on my phone—and figure that’s about 37,500 words. Where did that come from? I’m glad you asked…Industry standard for words per page is 250. That number assumes twelve-point, Times Roman, double-spaced. Now, just for shits and giggles, I’ll let you know that when you have one hundred pages that are in Garmond Book font, in nine-point, single spaced—with some very creative formatting—that number jumps to almost 200,000 words. That’s a slightly larger project.

My point here is that industry standard is 250 words per page. Sure, I could have just said that and been done. But I think it’s important to point out that it is common to have projects presented as being X number of pages. This is why I always base quotes on a word count. That way, I can give an accurate estimate, even if you’ve got 1,000 pages in twenty-point Windings. Well, except that I won’t be able to read the damn thing.