# Post your word count & KENP count



## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

There are obviously a lot of threads about these new changes, but I wanted to aim for one clean thread for word count and page count calculations. I'm getting the impression there is a lot of variation for novels of the same length.

*word count:* 76,000[/b]
*KENP count:* 292


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## ArchangelEST (Jan 19, 2015)

Non-fiction title, with only 2 small images. Standard page count - 46.

Word count: 10,000
KENP count: 83


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## CaraS. (Jul 18, 2014)

Fiction

Word count: 35,848

KENP: 145


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

Science fiction

Word Count: 112,000

KENP count: 367

I'm extremely butt hurt compared to others results, I'll probably won't renew select if my KENPC doesn't change.


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## Shiriluna Nott (Aug 26, 2014)

Fantasy, with long chapters and lots of chunky paragraphs.

Word count: 108,000
KENP Count: 515

Word count: 152,000
KENP Count: 646


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## GwynnEWhite (May 23, 2012)

Memoir 
word count: 105 000
KENPC: 629


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## danielsolomonkaplan (Aug 8, 2014)

Mine seem to be crazy high. I imagine Amazon will be normalizing it later, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Elevated
Word count: 61,000 
KENP count: 410

Catalyst
Word count: 57,000
KENP count: 349

The only thing I can gather is I tend to write very sparse with short paragraphs.


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## soyeljefe (Dec 29, 2014)

Fiction

Word Count: 40,000
KENP: 109


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

Slow Burn 12,497 words. No Images. My page count was 43. They say  44 pages. It was done with 12pt font and single spaced. So, yes, there is a large variance.


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## danielsolomonkaplan (Aug 8, 2014)

Just looking at the numbers so far it seems that it can range from 120-305 words a page. That's crazy. I can't imagine it will stay that uneven.


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## Vergence (Apr 17, 2015)

Fantasy

115k words
Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC) v1.0: 507


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

45,000 words
Kindle Page Count: 190


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

JalexM said:


> I'm extremely butt hurt compared to others results, I'll probably won't renew select if my KENPC doesn't change.


Yeah, I'm not really happy with my outcome, but your deal is even worse than mine. (260 words per page versus 305 for yours).


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## Kylo Ren (Mar 29, 2014)

Are you all looking at the place in the "Promote and Advertise" page for the KENCP? Cuz mine doesn't quite track with what some of you are posting.

Word count: 113,000
KENCP: 678 pages

Word count: 45,000
KENCP: 275

Am I misunderstanding something?


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

bb-8 said:


> Are you all looking at the place in the "Promote and Advertise" page for the KENCP? Cuz mine doesn't quite track with what some of you are posting.
> 
> Word count: 113,000
> KENCP: 678 pages
> ...


Nope you're not misunderstanding anything, it's widely different for each person. I contacted KDP to ask about it, but if they don't give a satisfactory answer i'm going to have to nuke it's formatting and start over to see if that would help.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

bb-8 said:


> Are you all looking at the place in the "Promote and Advertise" page for the KENCP? Cuz mine doesn't quite track with what some of you are posting.
> 
> Word count: 113,000
> KENCP: 678 pages
> ...


I was looking at the page count listed on the buy page. I'll have to go and check there.


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## danielsolomonkaplan (Aug 8, 2014)

Paragraph length must factor a bit, because ELEVATED has a higher word count to page ratio and it has longer paragraphs than CATALYST. In almost exactly the same ratio. But that would point to longer paragraphs being better, not worse.

So I guess I'm still confused. I don' t see how longer paragraphs somehow equal less words per page.


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## Annabel Chant (Feb 24, 2015)

Word count: 42,000
Pages: 160
KENCP: 246


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## Maia Sepp Ross (May 10, 2013)

danielsolomonkaplan said:


> Mine seem to be crazy high. I imagine Amazon will be normalizing it later, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
> 
> Elevated
> Word count: 61,000
> ...


I'm 58,000 words
KENP - 218


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## Kylo Ren (Mar 29, 2014)

I wonder if they're somehow using a character count rather than word count. Does that sound like a thing? Like if a writer generally uses more polysyllabic words, his page count could be higher even with a similar word count to someone else? I don't know; I'm not good at figuring this kind of stuff out.

EDIT: For instance, my 45k book is just over 250k characters. KENPC is 275 pages.


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## BrianSchell (Oct 26, 2014)

I've read that front and back matter don't count.

My SHORTEST thing published, not counting front matter, is 1858 words. KDP reports that as 17 Pages.

This just gets more and more confusing the further I do the math!

--------------------
Brian Schell
Experienced and Affordable Editor/Proofreader
http://BrianSchell.com


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## danielsolomonkaplan (Aug 8, 2014)

bb-8 said:


> I wonder if they're somehow using a character count rather than word count. Does that sound like a thing? Like if a writer generally uses more polysyllabic words, his page count could be higher even with a similar word count to someone else? I don't know; I'm not good at figuring this kind of stuff out.
> 
> EDIT: For instance, my 45k book is just over 250k characters. KENPC is 275 pages.


That rate doesn't hold true for me. For some reason ELEVATED is getting a lot less characters per page than CATALYST.


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## LifesHumor (Feb 5, 2014)

10,800 words 
KENP - 73


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## J.A. Sutherland (Apr 1, 2014)

Earlier in another thread I'd posted the stats for my books:

Into the Dark
87000 words
152 pages in Word
497 pages KENPC

Mutineer
93000 words
160 pages in Word
374 pages KENPC

I noted the discrepancy that the longer work had a lower KENPC.

So ... I reformatted both books a bit, as they were different. Into the Dark had no page break before chapter headings while Mutineer did. Moreover, Mutineer was set to 11pt and Into the Dark was 12pt.

Now, Amazon said they'd be using a _standard _font size etc., right?

Well, I formatted both books to page break before chapters and both to have a 12pt font size in the upload:

Into the Dark: KENPC = 512
Mutineer: KENPC = 537

Make of it what you will. :/

I'm disappointed, as a software developer, that Amazon can't hit a target like "standard". It's not freaking rocket science.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

J.A. Sutherland said:


> Earlier in another thread I'd posted the stats for my books:
> 
> Into the Dark
> 87000 words
> ...


This is probably the most informative post I've seen about this! Thanks for posting that info.


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

J.A. Sutherland said:


> Earlier in another thread I'd posted the stats for my books:
> 
> Into the Dark
> 87000 words
> ...


Hmm, i'm going to reformat it in this way to see if it helps when I get back from the gym.


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## Ainsley (Dec 26, 2013)

So it's possible Amazon has not rolled out the standardized font across all the books or are in the process?


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## Nancy Chase (May 17, 2014)

Fantasy (fairy tale) with chapter illustrations

Word count:  46,000
Print pages:  264
KENPC:  274


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## Evan of the R. (Oct 15, 2013)

Fiction, after removal of front matter & back matter:

56,726 words = 297 KENP 
= 191 words per KENP

47,566 words = 255 KENP 
= 187 words per KENP


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

Word count: 81,972
KENPC: 607

Word count: 81,950
KENPC: 453

Word count: 51,004
KENPC: 302

Word count: 50,360
KENPC: 289


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## J.D. Fournier (Oct 20, 2014)

I see a new business blossoming that will re-format your ebook to gain KENPC once the code is cracked. It might entail some hidden changes or larger visible changes, like more chapters, paragraph sizes, font size, more carriage returns. Trial and error on a few different samples should be able to crack the code.


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## J.A. Cipriano (May 27, 2014)

For what it's worth...

Book	    KENPC	Words	word/page
Book 1	329	51,827	157.5288754
Book 2	347	55,082	158.7377522
Book 3	309	49,990	161.7799353
Book 4	345	57,396	166.3652174
Book 5	352	56,106	159.3920455
Book 6	323	55,240	171.0216718


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## George Donnelly (Mar 5, 2012)

CN_Crawford said:


> *word count:* 76,000[/b]
> *KENP count:* 292


I have a 73,000 word anthology and the KENPC is 431.

So your number is surprising.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

_Family Games_

Short Story
Word count: 3,447
KENPC (*v1.0*): 33


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

Word Count: 138,000
Page count formatted for 6 x 9 Create Space: 391
KENPC: 873

Word Count: 108,000
Page count formatted for 6 x 9 Create Space: 354
KENPC: 688

Word Count: 6,000
If formatted as above for CS would be 22 pages
KENPC: 44


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

Fiction:

Word Count: 8,182
KENPC: 50

Non-fiction with numerous sub-sections:

Word Count: 7,307
KENPC: 56


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## Maggie Dana (Oct 26, 2011)

Most readers, even KDP authors, think in pages ... PRINT pages and various versions of Word pages ... and they all vary wildly depending on point size, leading, trim size, and margins. So if Amazon wanted to propel KDP/KU authors toward CreateSpace (which it owns), they'd be better off tying their KENPC (would that be a politically correct version of Barbie's Ken doll?) estimate to a book's print version than to anything else.


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## Lisa Blackwood (Feb 1, 2015)

Me thinks the coming days with be a bit of a rollercoaster as the Zon fixes its.....issues.  

Stone’s Kiss  (86,700)          467 Pages
Stone's Song (86,500)          386 pages
Beginnings (can’t remember)  67 pages


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## kyokominamino (Jan 23, 2014)

The Deadly Seven: 58,141
She Who Fights Monsters: 141,521

July 1st KENP: 990

I forgot this was going to change the graph, and I basically popped into KDP Reports and made this face:









I really need to find whatever thread can just explain it simply. I'm still a prawn, and my borrows only net me an extra $20-40 bucks a month, so as long as I'm still making that amount from the two books I have in KU, I'm fine.


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## T.J. Lantz (Sep 18, 2012)

AS a children's author, really got killed:

6500, with 15 full page color illustrations got me a 35 KENPC. I have 4 books of near exact specs, which used to earn me around $500 a month in borrows. Now that income source is all but dead. Children's had lent itself so well to borrowing, since it allowed a new bedtime story every night.


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## S.G. Dean (Jan 25, 2014)

Mine is a head scratching:

Word count: 164k
Page count on Create Space (minus back matter): 444
KENCP: 986


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

T.J. Lantz said:


> AS a children's author, really got killed:
> 
> 6500, with 15 full page color illustrations got me a 35 KENPC. I have 4 books of near exact specs, which used to earn me around $500 a month in borrows. Now that income source is all but dead. Children's had lent itself so well to borrowing, since it allowed a new bedtime story every night.


It seems like children's books should have a different system all together than novels.


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## RBK (Nov 28, 2014)

I have three books enrolled.

Book 1:
Word count: 60k
Page count: 220 pages
KENP: 318

Book 2:
Word count: 60k
Page count: 223 pages
KENP: 321

Book 3:
Word count: 59k
Page count: 250 pages (I think Zon must have updated their page count method because this book isn't formatted any differently to the first two, comes in 30ish pages longer)
KENP: 333

So all pretty consistent for me.  I think.


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## Hasbeen (Aug 13, 2013)

Book 1- 136,564 = 455 pages or 300 words per page

Book 2- 89,781 = 297 pages or 303 words per page 

Here's a question. After reading your stats, admittedly a small sample, I checked my words per page and found that it was 300 and 303. Now the question comes to mind is what font are you using and what size? I have been using Arial 12. Anybody else using a different size or type of font? That could account for the different word counts per page. I'm wondering if there is an ideal font and size for this new system.


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## Christine_C (Jun 29, 2014)

Our book was created in Vellum and doesn't have the option to set font size or type, so I'm not sure.


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

Looking through this thread, there doesn't seem to be a correlation between word count and KNEP page counts.

Really that makes sense. They are not paying us by the word, but by page count. The amount of dialog is bound to make a difference, especially short sentence rapid exchanges, just as it would in formatting a printed book to arrive at a page count. It is likely that is the reason for the wide discrepancies. Readers read by the page, so word count is irrelevant for these purposes.

On another thread, an author took the page count on one of my shorts from her actual kindle. She set the font size to the smallest and worked out the page count. She did that with differing increases in font size. The third increase hit my KNEP count exactly. It also did that on another book.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

Here are mine for the 6 serialized shorts in Where There's Smoke. It makes no sense. The pages listed are the KENPC count.

Wicked Heat            12,805 words        43 pages
Simmering Desire    12,524 words        59 pages 
Slow Burn                12,947 words        44 pages
Blistering Blaze        12,790 words        44 pages
Baptism by Fire        14,957 words        70 pages
From the Ashes        16,971 words        78 pages

It makes no sense. These books are set up the same way each time. Same font, same spacing, same number of chapters, give or take one. 

Simmering shows 16 more pages for almost 300 less words than Wicked. 15 more pages with over 400 less words than Slow. Slow and Blistering are within 150 words and are the same number of pages. Baptism has about 1,400 more words than and has 11 more pages. Ashes has only 14 more words and yet has 8 more pages than Baptism.


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## KGGiarratano (Aug 14, 2013)

YA Fic - The Lady in Blue
Word Count: 49K
KENPC: 244


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

After getting a nonanswer from amazon after asking about my page count, I reformatted my book and changed the font to 12 pt, new times roman and my count know comes out to 507, alot better than 367. Not under 200 a page yet though like most others but it's a start.


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## LoriP (Jun 2, 2014)

I have 4 titles in KU under my pen name (I haven't counted front and back matter in my word counts, but I suspect they may have included the back matter in the page count):

1: Word Count=17,500  KENPC = 114
2: Word Count=17,500  KENPC = 109
3: Word Count=17,500  KENPC = 107
4: Word Count=17,500  KENPC = 111 (this one says they haven't set the start point yet, so it may change)


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Decon said:


> Looking through this thread, there doesn't seem to be a correlation between word count and KNEP page counts.
> 
> Really that makes sense. They are not paying us by the word, but by page count. The amount of dialog is bound to make a difference, especially short sentence rapid exchanges, just as it would in formatting a printed book to arrive at a page count. It is likely that is the reason for the wide discrepancies. Readers read by the page, so word count is irrelevant for these purposes.
> 
> On another thread, an author took the page count on one of my shorts from her actual kindle. She set the font size to the smallest and worked out the page count. She did that with differing increases in font size. The third increase hit my KNEP count exactly. It also did that on another book.


I really need more books for complete data.


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## archaeoroutes (Oct 12, 2014)

Independence (fiction) 30997 characters | 6445 words (5931 not counting start and end) | 46 KENPC

The Best Bits of Physics (non-fiction) 48273 characters | 10337 words (9945 not counting starts and end) + 3 diagrams and a couple of tables | 94 KENPC
A VERY Brief History of Britain (non-fiction) 24691 characters | 5014 words (4330 not counting start and end) + quite a few pictures | 37 KENPC

NB: Both non-fiction books have short 'chapters' - a double-spread each on the printed version.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

Two thriller novels. approximately 50 chapters each with page breaks and about 100-120 small chapter and section dividers in each.

Word count: 100-102K
KENPC Page counts: 683 and 697
Amazon Product page counts: around 310



Decon said:


> On another thread, an author took the page count on one of my shorts from her actual kindle. She set the font size to the smallest and worked out the page count. She did that with differing increases in font size. The third increase hit my KNEP count exactly. It also did that on another book.


I suspect this is how to get the most accurate number for most people, BUT having looked at the sample of Alex McCarthy's book I doubt it explains his low page count. So there clearly are some kinks to be worked out.


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## RMR (Sep 28, 2015)

word count = 12,548    KENPC = 67
word count = 140,643  KENPC = 694
word count = 68,415    KENPC = 318
word count = 49,767    KENPC = 323

The last two are a little disturbing ^^^  Nearly a 20K difference in words and the KENPC is basically the same.    All of my ebooks are MS Word doc.x.


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## tommy gun (May 3, 2015)

Everyone desperately works to figure this out.

I think I have an understanding of how it works.  From an old story that I can not even remember except for the line.
"They have a really big hat with numbers in it...... It was a shame that they pulled out the hat size.  It was a really good book and would have done better....."

Amazon algo = based on magic fairy dust....


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## Gina Black (Mar 15, 2011)

Historical Romance:  88.5K words  487K characters  489KENP

I'm seeing a possible character correlation.

I compiled an ePub with Scrivener and then I used Sigil to clean it up. (I somehow had 7 .css pages--probably because of how I imported it.)


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## vrabinec (May 19, 2011)

208k words, 1178 pages. 

Looks about right compared to most others posted. Something's up with some of those ratios, though. I wouldn't worry if I had a higher pages to words ratio, but I'd work on it if the ratio looks low. You're costing yourself money. 

I guess I could stretch minedo double space after periods and all that, but that would feel too much like cheating.


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## TT Kove (Aug 20, 2015)

Contemporary m/m romance
Wordcount: 21,000
KENPC: 121


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## Gessert Books (Apr 20, 2015)

It might be helpful too for folks to post what file format they uploaded (MOBI vs EPUB vs DOC), and what tools they used (Sigil, Calibre, Vellum, MS Word, etc) to create the files.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Back in July, someone posted that the formula was characters (including spaces) in Word divided by 100. I checked all my books and the formula just about nailed it. Considering that some books might use very simplified language (middle grade fiction for instance) as opposed to a book on biology, it makes some sense. Besides, it seems to work out.


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## Gessert Books (Apr 20, 2015)

Although word count may figure into it, I don't think the relationship is that direct. Because if it were, reformats of the same work wouldn't lead to KENPC variance.


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## Guest (Sep 28, 2015)

Word count: 103,918
Character (with spaces): 561,954
KNEP: 579

I exported to HTML, cleaned it up in Dreamweaver, then used Calibre to finish it off and generate the MOBI which I uploaded so my character count may be off slightly from what I actually uploaded.


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## JeanneM (Mar 21, 2011)

I don't understand any of this or what any of it means.  So confused.

I have one in KU...my new one Vampire's pet. It is approx 6,993 wds if I recall correctly and adding up the .com and India, the Ken number is 320.

What doe this mean? I hate feeling at sea.


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## hardnutt (Nov 19, 2010)

Biographical Historical Fiction 486 pages KENP 1400
Mystery 400 (wrong on kindle, it's actually 175!) KENP 217
Mystery 480 this time (actually 135!)  KENP 84
Short Stories 27 pages KENP 5


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## hunterone (Feb 6, 2013)

What a great thread. Gives us all a nice idea of what we should be seeing.


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## hunterone (Feb 6, 2013)

JalexM said:


> After getting a nonanswer from amazon after asking about my page count, I reformatted my book and changed the font to 12 pt, new times roman and my count know comes out to 507, alot better than 367. Not under 200 a page yet though like most others but it's a start.


But what did you upload? A mobi file or word doc?


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## Bec (Aug 24, 2012)

Last Day - ~20,000 words = 124 KENPC
Long Road Home - ~50,000 words = 311 KENPC

Mobi, compiled in Scrivener.


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## Jerry Patterson (Nov 20, 2013)

These books were published using WORD

A 17K word romance.
61 pages according to the sales page.
KENPC- 172

Another romance- 33 K words
101 pages
KENPC-310


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

Jamie Warren said:


> These books were published using WORD
> 
> A 17K word romance.
> 61 pages according to the sales page.
> ...


Jamie, did you upload a .doc file or .docx file? Is your book heavy in dialog or images?


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## Jerry Patterson (Nov 20, 2013)

Gator said:


> Jamie, did you upload a .doc file or .docx file? Is your book heavy in dialog or images?


They are .docx files. No images but of course dialog. They are Georgia 14 and multiple 3.


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## mythsnake (Oct 22, 2014)

Wow, this really peeves me:

87,000 word historical romance
261 KENP 

Seeing the other numbers people are reporting, I'm getting serious ripped off on borrows. I subbed an epub I made in Sigil, using a barebones CSS style sheet, which makes me wonder if the amount of html and CSS code in the ebook is having an effect on page counts. I might try going back in and making it in Word instead, since Word creates a huge amount of code during conversion.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

Jamie Warren said:


> They are .docx files. No images but of course dialog. They are Georgia 14 and multiple 3.


Thanks. I understand Georgia font, size 14, but what does "multiple 3" mean?


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## Jerry Patterson (Nov 20, 2013)

Gator said:


> Thanks. I understand Georgia font, size 14, but what does "multiple 3" mean?


Line spacing.


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

mythsnake said:


> I subbed an epub I made in Sigil, using a barebones CSS style sheet, which makes me wonder if the amount of html and CSS code in the ebook is having an effect on page counts.


It can't be just that. I handcode html and it's very lean and then create a mobil file using Mobi Creator. I realize that's a dated way of doing it, but it's still what I use.

85,000 words = 542 KENPC

P.S. It seems to me it would be helpful if everyone posted their formatting method along with their word/KENPC count.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

Jamie Warren said:


> Line spacing.


Ah, gotcha. Thanks.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

I have been reading this thread and notice that a lot of peoples page counts have gone down since the time they posted their responses. I wonder why. A lot of people's page counts are down by 50-100 pages. Is that just amazon catching up and correcting things?


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

dragontucker said:


> I have been reading this thread and notice that a lot of peoples page counts have gone down since the time they posted their responses. I wonder why. A lot of people's page counts are down by 50-100 pages. Is that just amazon catching up and correcting things?


The page count you see on the Amazon product page is either based upon the print book's page count or an estimate of the page count on a Kindle device. Neither has anything to do with the KENPCs listed in this thread.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

Gator said:


> The page count you see on the Amazon product page is either based upon the print book's page count or an estimate of the page count on a Kindle device. Neither has anything to do with the KENPCs listed in this thread.


I am confused though. I thought the kindle page count is what was being discussed here. I thought this thread was about comparing how many words equals such and such page counts.


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## Gessert Books (Apr 20, 2015)

dragontucker said:


> I am confused though. I thought the kindle page count is what was being discussed here. I thought this thread was about comparing how many words equals such and such page counts.


Basically, folks are trying their hardest to find a way to estimate KENPC, which is not necessarily the same as the ebook pagecount listed on a store page, and which in turn is totally abstract as a concept. Amazon is really opaque about how these calculations are made, so people are trying to find a pattern.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

dragontucker said:


> I thought the kindle page count is what was being discussed here. I thought this thread was about comparing how many words equals such and such page counts.


They're comparing manuscript word count with the KENPC (Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count) for eBooks enrolled in KDP Select. Some have reported as few as 109 words per page and others reported higher than 300 words per page. Since Amazon pays per page, not per word, for KU reads, it's better to have the low words per KENP than the high words per KENP.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

Gator said:


> They're comparing manuscript word count with the KENPC (Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count) for eBooks enrolled in KDP Select. Some have reported as few as 109 words per page and others reported higher than 300 words per page. Since Amazon pays per page, not per word, for KU reads, it's better to have the low words per KENP than the high words per KENP.


I thought KENP page count was listed in the books description where it says page count? Maybe that is why I am confused?


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## Kate. (Oct 7, 2014)

dragontucker said:


> I thought KENP page count was listed in the books description where it says page count? Maybe that is why I am confused?


Unfortunately no. The page count listed on our Amazon product pages are an entirely different thing, and can be controlled by uploading a print version of the book to give an accurate number.

The only way to see a book's KENPC is to go into the book dashboard and click on "promote and advertise" next to a book. Partway down is a section listing the KENPC count. It's not exactly intuitive to find. =/

That's why we're posting our KENPC numbers - because there's no way to know another author's KENPC unless they tell you.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

Darcy said:


> Unfortunately no. The page count listed on our Amazon product pages are an entirely different thing, and can be controlled by uploading a print version of the book to give an accurate number.
> 
> The only way to see a book's KENPC is to go into the book dashboard and click on "promote and advertise" next to a book. Partway down is a section listing the KENPC count. It's not exactly intuitive to find. =/
> 
> That's why we're posting our KENPC numbers - because there's no way to know another author's KENPC unless they tell you.


Thank you so much!! LOL.....now I understand. I didn't know where to find the KENPC count.


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## Kate. (Oct 7, 2014)

dragontucker said:


> Thank you so much!! LOL.....now I understand. I didn't know where to find the KENPC count.


I don't blame you - they don't make it easy to find! I'd love for Amazon to publish it on the dashboard, next to the book's price, but KU2 has been out for a while and they haven't changed it yet.


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## hardnutt (Nov 19, 2010)

So what's that KENP showing on the dashboard alonside your sales? Confused.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

7seasonsgirl said:


> Four books with the following KENP
> 
> 86236 words 541 KENP
> 91207 words 571 KENP
> ...


You should count the number of words in the back matter, too, because the KENPC does. For example, if your readers of the fourth eBook listed above don't read the back matter, assuming it's 181 words per KENP, you'll be paid for 517 pages, not 592. At the most recent payout, that's a difference of $0.38 per eBook. If 1,000 readers don't read the back matter, you'd be paid $380 less than if they did.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

7seasonsgirl said:


> Thanks for your message. I really don't know if they count the back matters, although I think they do.


Amazon stated in KDP Help and in an email that the KENPC is calculated from the SRL (Start Reading Location), which is usually Chapter 1, to the end of file (100% mark), including any back matter.



> maybe I will play with some changes with these new books to see if the number improves.


If I were in your shoes, I'd readjust the left indent on the eBooks I already uploaded to get back those lost 5 to 10 KENPs on each eBook. That's worth $25 to $50 for 1,000 KU reads of your eBooks.


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## Kate. (Oct 7, 2014)

hardnutt said:


> So what's that KENP showing on the dashboard alonside your sales? Confused.


That's the total number of pages read. You'll be paid for those pages, regardless of whether the reader only finished half the book or even just one page.

Sales Dashboard KENPC > How many pages are read each day
Promote and Advertise KENPC > Your book is this number of pages long

Some authors note down their KENPC number from the Promote and Advertise section and divide their Sales Dashboard KENPC by that number. That gives them an approximate estimation of how many "complete" reads each book has had (seeing as Amazon won't tell us how many times our books are borrowed).


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## celadon (Sep 12, 2015)

7,000 words.

81 KENP. 

(My book has a LOT of pictures in it, so that must be taken into account.)

Edit: I created the book in Scrivener, and used the default settings (whatever they are) for non-fiction. That's all I know.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

7seasonsgirl said:


> What indent is the most common if there is one?


I don't know what the most common indent is. The only recommendation I've seen (which was years ago) is 0 indent for paragraphs, with 0.3 to 0.4 indent for the first line of paragraphs for fiction, 0.01 indent for the first line of paragraphs for nonfiction.


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## Christopher Holliday (Oct 16, 2015)

danielsolomonkaplan said:


> Just looking at the numbers so far it seems that it can range from 120-305 words a page. That's crazy. I can't imagine it will stay that uneven.


I have a short story posted that is 4500 words. KENP is 11 pages. That's 406 words per page, which makes no sense at all. In standard MS Word manuscript format, it's 21 pages. Initially there was a notice that the total may be recalculated, but that has yet to happen.


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## hardnutt (Nov 19, 2010)

Darcy said:


> That's the total number of pages read. You'll be paid for those pages, regardless of whether the reader only finished half the book or even just one page.
> 
> Sales Dashboard KENPC > How many pages are read each day
> Promote and Advertise KENPC > Your book is this number of pages long
> ...


Ah! Thanks, Darcy. It all becomes clearer. But I wish Amazon would remember that some of ain't very good (read: at all) at maths.


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## hardnutt (Nov 19, 2010)

Right, so on my promote and advertise page I'm:

Historical KENP 751 / 486 pages (correct. Hurrah!)
Mystery KENP 440 / 8 pages! I hadn't noticed this. BTW it's a novel. 200 odd pages, again.
Mystery KENP 405 / 480 pages as per Amazon, though really, the hb was only about 200 odd.

It's rather a let-down after readering the numbers on my sales page.


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## Christopher Holliday (Oct 16, 2015)

Christopher Holliday said:


> I have a short story posted that is 4500 words. KENP is 11 pages. That's 406 words per page, which makes no sense at all. In standard MS Word manuscript format, it's 21 pages. Initially there was a notice that the total may be recalculated, but that has yet to happen.


A minor correction here. I sent a query to Amazon and received a prompt response. They calculate the KENP for this story at 18 pages for 4500 words, so all fine there. Literally exactly 250 words per page.

The discrepancy I was seeing was the page count listed on the story's Amazon profile - it's listed as 11 pages and is categorized in the Short Reads > 15 minutes, even though it's almost twice as long.


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## Ian Jaymes (Jan 22, 2015)

Reading through all these responses, I thought it might be useful to take a higher-level look, and see what the data here actually look like all together.

Mean Words per KENPC: 173.4
Min Words per KENPC: 86
Max Words per KENPC: 305
Samples: 93

Note that this excludes several people I suspect or confirmed (by checking) were reporting their Amazon page value (what Amazon calculates for your work and places on your public product page). Here is a plot showing your reported total words and KENPC:










You can see most of us are pretty strongly along the line, the regression equation tells us we get 0.0056 KENPC per word, not so far off from pennies per KENPC read . That works out to a words per KENPC of 178.6, which is pretty close to the observed mean above. The R^2 value is pretty high too, 0.93, so words alone explain a lot of the variation in the number of KENPC you get. You can see though, there are notable outliers, especially below the line- these are those of you who are especially unhappy. Please double check that you are actually seeing/reporting here KENPC, and not just the number of pages from Amazon. Everyone that I flagged as suspected or confirmed as reporting the wrong number had supposed KENPC values around 250-400 or so...

Here is a plot showing reported Amazon pages and KENPC:










Fewer samples here, and not as strong as a regression, but for your viewing pleasure anyway. Here we get an estimate of 1.87 KENPC per 'Zon page.' Again this is not print pages (i.e. from Createspace- as many of you reported) but the auto-generated value put on your public book page.

Here's one that may alleviate many fears:










For those of you that provided filetype info, I broke down the chart to display words per KENPC by filetype (doc/docx, mobi and epub). I didn't do any statistical comparisons of the three types, but I think visually, it's pretty clear that all three generally perform the same, and that us shorter writers seem to prefer (or only have) Word. For me, I'm at the short end (1k, 1k, 3k, 8k, 13.5k) and am just starting out, so Word it is!

Finally, just to test a hunch I had, here is words per KENPC versus total words. I wanted to see if there were any biases against shorter or longer works:










It appears there are not. I don't show the regression, but the R^2 was only 0.03 and the slope of the line was only slightly upward, so I think my hunch was wrong, and all lengths get treated generally the same.

So caveats- I could only present this based on what you all reported, and obviously for some data types not many did (e.g. file type). Also, some reported heavy images, and fiction vs non-fiction, lots of dialogue vs lots of narration, etc.- I can't really quantify those, and it may be where some of the variation is seen. The only curation I did was to remove the data for those I thought were accidentally reporting amazon pages and not KENPC- KENPC vs pages vs print pages- it's hard to always be sure!

I'll let you all decide for yourself what these charts mean, and I hope they are interesting and useful. Clearly, from this thread, many of you saw considerable changes in KENPC values based on tweaks in formatting and changes to file type, so there must be something to that. But from what was reported here (through page 4), it looks like total words is a pretty darn good predictor for KENPC for most of us.


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## Gator (Sep 28, 2012)

Thanks, Ian.  This is useful info.  And comforting.


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## JayBrenham (Sep 11, 2015)

Survival in the Seven Cities

Word Count- 10,147
KENP- Unknown, permafree and not enrolled

Fall of the Seven Cities- 

Word Count- 20,000
KENP- 171

Exodus from the Seven Cities-

Word Count- 82,000
KENP- 456


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Another data point if it's useful:

Word count: 33,759 (fiction only; not the front or back matter)
KENPC: 225
Amazon listed page count: (based on ebook; print book not yet available): 106


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## SeanDGolden (Jan 28, 2015)

My two books are almost identical in word count, both being about 120K words. Warrior is listed as 283 KENP pages and Warlock is listed as 460. I think it's because I submitted Warrior to Amazon's Kindle converter as a MS Word file, and Warlock as a .mobi file. I keep meaning to go back and resubmit Warrior as a .mobi just to see if it changes, but I never find the time.


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## Elysae (Sep 13, 2015)

Two shorts without the front matter.

John: 5280/38 KENPC/139 wpp
What Lies Within: 12090 words/69 KENPC/175 wpp


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## Ian Jaymes (Jan 22, 2015)

Here's what I mean by 'pages' vs. real pages- the red datapoints are those I confirmed (or it was outright stated by the poster) to be pages from the Amazon product page (i.e. not print or KENP). You can see how they pull off the regression line:










Anyway, as I said, if you keep listing, I will keep a running update- and the more info the better... like Amazon pages, file-type, etc.

I've also posted the charts at my shiny new blog:

http://www.ianjaymes.com/?p=92


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## MattKnott (Aug 29, 2015)

Heroic Fantasy 

98867 Words

397 KENP


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