Reading Time for Popular Books
Real word counts for well-known novels, converted to reading time at common speeds.
Quick answer: at the average adult pace of 238 WPM, a typical 90,000-word novel takes about 6.3 hours to read. Shorter genre fiction (60,000 words) takes about 4.2 hours; long epic fantasy (150,000+ words) can take 10+ hours.
Word counts for well-known books
Publishers rarely publish exact word counts, so figures below are widely cited approximations, converted to reading time at 238 WPM (casual reader) and 150 WPM (careful/technical reader).
| Book | Approx. words | At 238 WPM | At 150 WPM |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Hobbit | 95,000 | ~6.7 hr | ~10.6 hr |
| Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | 77,000 | ~5.4 hr | ~8.6 hr |
| Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | 257,000 | ~18 hr | ~28.6 hr |
| The Great Gatsby | 47,000 | ~3.3 hr | ~5.2 hr |
| 1984 | 89,000 | ~6.2 hr | ~9.9 hr |
| Average adult novel | 90,000 | ~6.3 hr | ~10 hr |
Why book reading time varies more than blog reading time
Unlike a blog post, books are read in sessions over days or weeks, so real elapsed reading time depends heavily on session frequency, not just WPM. Dense prose, unfamiliar vocabulary, and world-building-heavy fantasy also slow readers below their usual pace — see our average reading speed guide for how content difficulty affects WPM.
Estimate your own book's reading time
Paste a chapter or the full manuscript into the ReadMetric calculator, select the Reading Time tab, and choose the Casual or Technical persona to match your genre's typical reader.