Calculate Time to Read a Book

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📘 How to Use the Reading Calculator

When calculating how long it will take you to read a book, bear in mind that your reading speed depends not only on how fast you read but also on the difficulty of the book. Works like Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (James Joyce), Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace), and Moby-Dick (Herman Melville) are much more challenging than The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho), Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck), or Animal Farm (George Orwell). This difference in difficulty can significantly affect how long it takes to finish a book.

For the most personalised and accurate results, begin by measuring your individual reading speed. Set a timer for 60 seconds and read at your normal, comfortable pace. At the end of the minute, count how many words you’ve read, and enter that number into the “Words per minute” field.

To estimate how many words are on a single page of the book you’re reading:

1. Count the number of words across two lines of text.
2. Divide that number by 2 to get an average words-per-line figure.
3. Multiply this by the total number of lines on one page.

Example:

• Two lines of text contain 20 words.
• 20 ÷ 2 = 10 words per line
• If the page has 20 lines: 10 × 20 = 200 words per page

You don’t need to go into this much detail if you just want a rough estimate. But it’s a great option if you’re a very precise reader or someone who loves data and accuracy!

Wondering how many books you could read in a year? Find out how many you can get through based on the number of pages you read in a day with our “Books in a Year” Calculator.