finding out how many words in a novel

[Extrocomp]

I'm interested in comparing the length of various novels. Is there any way of determining a novel's word count, besides getting an e-book? Not all novels are available as e-books. Is there any website out there that has this kind of information? If not, is there any way of estimating the word count of a novel? Counting the words on one page and multiplying it by the number of pages wouldn't work because pages at the start and end of a chapter always have less words. Any ideas?

Edit: I've found one website that has word count information for some books, but many books are not on it. Maybe I should ask them how they do it.
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.perma-bound.com+%22word+count%22&meta=

 

[RoJoHen]

I'd wager that if you figured out a word count for one page in a particular book and multiply by the number of pages, you'd get a fairly accurate word count for the whole thing.

 

[Scott Delaney]

Yeah, I agree - work it out for one page, then multiply by the number of pages. Then find the number of words less on the first page of a chapter - multiply that by the number of chapters and subtract that from the existing total. To take account of the final pages of chapters, you could count the chapters, multiply that by the number of words on a page, then divide by 2 and subtract the result from the total.

You still won't have an exact count, but the estimate should be really close.

 

[Smiley]

Here's a method with less calculations. Count the number of words on an average page. Eyeball how many complete pages of text the first and last pages of chapters have. Subtract from the total page count the difference between your tally and how many there would have been if they had all been complete pages. Multiply words/page by the new page count. As Mr. Luthor would say, "Voila!"

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

From the Science Fiction Writers of America FAQ:

"HOW DO EDITORS ESTIMATE WORD COUNTS:

First, flip through a number of pages to get a sense of the length of an average complete line. Use a line of prose, not a line of dialog. Next, count the total number of characters (not words) in that line, including punctuation and spaces.

Now flip through a bunch of pages again, counting the average number of lines on each page. (If you've used standard formatting, this number should be fairly consistent).

Next, multiply the average number of characters per line by the average number of lines per page. (For example, 66 characters/line x 26 lines/page = 1716 characters/page.

Then multiply that number by the number of pages in the manuscript. Here you may want to introduce some "fudge factors." If all of your pages have a lot of dialogue, or lots of line breaks, multiply the final number by .85 or .9.

You will now have a humongous number which represents the approxiate number of =characters= in the manuscript. Divide this number by 5.5 or 6, the publishing industry's length for a standard "word."

Round this number to the nearest 100 for short stories. (Go ahead and round up; everyone does!) Round to the nearest 1000 words for novels."