How Long Does It Take to Write a Book? The Real Maths

The time it takes to write a book is your target word count divided by the words you write per day, plus time for revision and editing. At 1,000 words a day, five days a week, an 80,000-word draft takes 80 writing days, or about 16 weeks. Revision and editing often take as long as the draft, or longer, so a realistic plan for that book is closer to eight months than four.

The rest of this article walks through the maths step by step, gives you a table you can plan from, and covers what speeds things up and what slows them down.

The basic formula for how long a book takes

There are three parts to the calculation:

1. Drafting time = target word count ÷ words you write per session
2. Calendar time = drafting sessions ÷ sessions per week
3. Total time = calendar drafting time + rest + revision + editing + production

The first two are simple division. The third is where most estimates go wrong, because people plan the draft and forget that a draft is not a finished book.

Here is a worked example. Say you are writing a 70,000-word novel. You can reliably write 750 words a session, four sessions a week.

• 70,000 ÷ 750 = about 94 sessions
• 94 sessions ÷ 4 per week = about 23.5 weeks of drafting

That is just under six months for the first draft alone. Your revision time comes on top of that.

How many words your book needs

You can't do the maths without a target. Length varies a lot by type of book. A novel, a practical non-fiction guide, a short-form business book and a children's chapter book all have different expectations, and genres within fiction differ too.

Before you set a target, look at five to ten recently published books in your exact category and check their length. Our guide to how many words are in a novel goes through typical ranges by genre. If you think in pages rather than words, the book page count calculator converts between the two for common trim sizes.

Pick one number and write it down. "Somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000" is too wide to plan from. You can adjust later, but the plan needs a fixed figure.

First draft time at 500, 1,000 or 2,000 words a day

The table below shows drafting time only. It assumes you write five days a week and hit your number every session. In real life you will miss days, so treat these as best-case figures.

Words per writing day	50,000-word book	80,000-word book	100,000-word book
500	100 days (20 weeks)	160 days (32 weeks)	200 days (40 weeks)
1,000	50 days (10 weeks)	80 days (16 weeks)	100 days (20 weeks)
2,000	25 days (5 weeks)	40 days (8 weeks)	50 days (10 weeks)

A few things stand out:

• 500 words a day is enough. It sounds small, but at five days a week it produces a full 80,000-word draft in well under a year.
• Doubling your output halves your drafting time. It does not halve your total time, because revision doesn't shrink at the same rate.
• Consistency beats bursts. Someone who writes 500 words every weekday will usually finish before someone who writes 3,000 words on one good Saturday and nothing the rest of the month.

To find your real daily number, time yourself for a week of normal sessions. Don't use your best day. Use your average.

How long revising and editing take

There is no fixed ratio here, and anyone who gives you one as a rule is guessing. Revision time depends on how messy your draft is, how much you planned beforehand, and how many passes you need.

A cautious planning assumption is to budget at least as much time for revision as you spent drafting. Then adjust once you see what your draft needs. Typical stages look like this:

Rest period. Put the draft away for a few weeks. You will spot problems far more easily with fresh eyes.

Structural revision. Read the whole book and fix the big things: plot holes, missing arguments, chapters in the wrong order, characters who change without reason. This is often the slowest pass because it can mean rewriting whole sections.

Line editing. Work through sentence by sentence for clarity, rhythm and repetition. This is slower per page than drafting, but you are not inventing anything new.

Feedback. Beta readers or a professional editor read the book and send notes. Ask any editor you hire for their current turnaround time before you set a launch date, since it varies between editors and with their workload.

Proofreading. A final pass for typos, formatting slips and inconsistencies.

Production. Formatting the interior, preparing the cover and writing the book description. If you plan to self-publish, our guide on how to self-publish a book covers these steps.

What a full timeline looks like in practice

Here are two example plans. The numbers are illustrations of the maths, not averages from real authors.

Example 1: novelist with a day job

• Target: 80,000 words
• Output: 1,000 words a day, five days a week
• Draft: 16 weeks
• Rest: 3 weeks
• Structural revision: 8 weeks
• Beta readers: 4 weeks
• Line edit and second revision: 6 weeks
• Proofread and formatting: 3 weeks
• Total: about 40 weeks, or roughly nine months

Example 2: non-fiction author writing a practical guide

• Target: 45,000 words
• Output: 500 words a day, five days a week
• Draft: 18 weeks
• Rest: 2 weeks
• Revision and fact-checking: 6 weeks
• Editor: 4 weeks
• Proofread and formatting: 2 weeks
• Total: about 32 weeks, or roughly seven and a half months

The non-fiction book is shorter but doesn't take much less time, because the writer is slower per day and has to verify every claim. This pattern is common. Word count is only one input.

What actually speeds up writing a book

Outline before you draft

The biggest time sink in drafting is sitting down without knowing what comes next. A chapter-by-chapter outline means every session starts with a clear task. It also reduces structural revision later, because you have solved many problems on paper first. See how to outline a novel for a practical method you can adapt to non-fiction too.

Separate drafting from editing

Rewriting yesterday's paragraph before you write today's is the most common reason daily output drops. Keep a running list of fixes ("change her name in chapter 3", "this argument needs a source") and keep moving forward. Deal with the list in revision.

Write at the same time every day

A fixed slot, even 30 minutes, removes the daily decision about whether to write. Many writers find a slot before other obligations works best, but the right time is whichever one you can protect.

Use timed sprints

Set a timer for 25 minutes and write without stopping, checking anything or reading back. Count the words afterwards. Sprints also show you your real hourly rate, which makes your planning more accurate.

Try dictation

Many people speak faster than they type. Dictating a rough draft and cleaning it up afterwards can raise your daily output, though it usually adds some editing time per chapter.

Cut research during drafting

When you hit a fact you don't know, type a placeholder like [CHECK: date of event] and move on. Do the research in a batch later.

Use AI to draft from a plan

AI writing tools can produce a full first draft much faster than writing by hand, which shifts most of your time into planning and revision. With Inkora's AI book writer, you give a brief covering genre, audience, tone, point of view and length. Inkora builds an editable book bible with a premise, characters or key concepts, a style guide and a chapter-by-chapter outline, then writes each chapter. It uses continuity notes and a fact ledger so the book stays consistent with itself.

You still need to revise, and you must verify any facts, figures or recipes yourself, because Inkora does not fact-check. Our guide on how to write a book with AI explains how to keep the book sounding like you.

Common problems and fixes

You fell behind your daily target. Don't try to make up the missed words in one huge session. That usually leads to burnout and more missed days. Lower your daily number to something you can hit every time, then recalculate your finish date with the formula above. A slower plan you can keep is better than a fast one you abandon.

You're stuck in the middle. Middles stall when the outline runs thin. Stop drafting for a day and outline the next five chapters in detail. If that doesn't work, skip ahead and write a scene or section you're excited about, then come back.

The draft is much longer or shorter than planned. Finish it anyway. Length problems are easier to fix in revision when you can see the whole book. Overlong drafts usually lose words from repeated scenes and over-explained points. Short drafts often need a subplot developed or an example added per chapter.

Revision is taking forever. You may be trying to fix everything in one pass. Do one thing per pass: structure first, then scenes or sections, then sentences. Set a date for when each pass ends.

You keep restarting from chapter one. This is perfectionism disguised as revision. Ban yourself from reading earlier chapters until the draft is finished. A complete rough draft is worth more than a polished first act.

Life got in the way for weeks. Reread your outline and the last chapter only, then write a short session to restart momentum. Recalculate your timeline from today rather than counting the lost weeks as failure.

For a wider view of the whole process from idea to finished manuscript, read our step-by-step guide on how to write a book.

Your writing time comes down to simple maths: pick a word count, measure your real daily output, divide, and then add honest time for revision. Choose a pace you can keep for months, not days, and you will finish. Once the draft exists, every remaining step is about making it better, not making it exist.