--- title: "Reading time calculator — how long is your book to read?" description: "How long your word count takes to read silently, to read aloud, and to run as a finished audiobook. Free, and nothing is uploaded." source: https://usegalley.com/resources/reading-time-calculator --- [Home](https://usegalley.com/) [Resources](https://usegalley.com/resources) Reading time calculator # Reading time calculator How long your book takes to read silently, to read out loud, and to run as a finished audiobook. One word count, three very different numbers. Word count Reader Reads for Silent reading 5h 46m 12 nights at half an hour - **Read aloud, at 183 words a minute**: 8h 12m - **Finished audiobook, at 9,300 words an hour**: 9h 41m - **Studio time behind that audiobook**: about 58 hours - **A single chapter of 3,000 words**: 12 minutes This runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, and there is no account to make. ## How the reading times are worked out Silent reading uses 260 words a minute, the figure for fiction in Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of the reading speed literature. Non-fiction sits lower at 238, and reading aloud lower again at 183. The slow and fast settings are roughly the edges of the normal range, not records. Audiobook length is the word count divided by 9,300, the long-standing industry figure for one finished hour. It works out near 155 words a minute. Studio time assumes six hours of work behind every finished hour, covering recording, retakes, editing and proofing. That is a rule of thumb narrators quote, not a quotation. Reading speed varies more between people than any of this suggests, and difficulty moves it further. Treat these as the shape of the answer. If you are checking whether the book is the right length rather than how long it takes to read, [the genre ranges](https://usegalley.com/resources/novel-word-count-by-genre) are the better tool. **For working things out, not for signing anything.** Printers and retailers set their own rates and specifications, change them without notice, and none of them is affiliated with me or with Galley. I last checked this page in August 2026. Confirm on the official page before you commit money to a price, a print run or a contract. ## Questions How long does it take to read 100,000 words? About six and a half hours at an average adult fiction reading speed of 260 words a minute. A slow reader takes eleven hours, a fast one four. Most readers get through it over a fortnight of evenings. How long is an audiobook of my novel? Divide the word count by 9,300. That is the industry rule for a finished hour of narration, and it works out at about 155 words a minute, slower than ordinary reading aloud because a narrator paces for the ear. A 90,000 word novel runs to just under ten hours. How fast do people read? Around 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, from a meta-analysis of the reading speed literature. Reading aloud is much slower, near 183. The speed reading claims of a thousand words a minute do not survive comprehension testing. Why does the audiobook take longer than reading aloud? A narrator is not reading at conversational pace. They hold pauses at scene breaks, separate dialogue, and slow down for anything the ear could miss. The gap between 183 and 155 words a minute is that work. ## Next [Word count by genreWhether the length is right for the shelf.](https://usegalley.com/resources/novel-word-count-by-genre) [Writing pace calculatorHow long it takes to write, not to read.](https://usegalley.com/resources/writing-pace-calculator) [Words to printed pagesThe same word count as a physical object.](https://usegalley.com/resources/word-count-to-page-count) [Readability checkerHow hard the words are, not just how many.](https://usegalley.com/resources/prose-readability-checker) More at [the resources index](https://usegalley.com/resources). Put all this into practice when you write your novel in Galley. [Launch Galley](https://app.usegalley.com)