Small, regular reading adds up to more than most people expect. At 20 minutes a day and the average adult speed of 238 words a minute, you read about 1.74 million words a year: 23 books of 300 pages. Enter the minutes you read, how many days a week, your speed and the size of a typical book, and the calculator gives the books a year, the time one book takes, the pages a day and the reading hours in a year.
Books a year by daily reading time
300-page books at 250 words a page, every day of the week:
| Minutes a day | Non-fiction speed (238 wpm) | Fiction speed (260 wpm) | Books in 10 years (238 wpm) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 11.6 | 12.7 | 116 |
| 15 | 17.4 | 19.0 | 174 |
| 20 | 23.2 | 25.3 | 232 |
| 30 | 34.8 | 38.0 | 348 |
| 45 | 52.2 | 57.0 | 522 |
| 60 | 69.5 | 76.0 | 695 |
Ten minutes before bed is roughly a book a month. Twenty minutes in a daily commute is almost two books a month.
Where the average speed comes from
The default of 238 words a minute is the average silent reading rate for English non-fiction found by Marc Brysbaert in a 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies with more than 18,000 readers; for fiction it was 260. Reading aloud is slower, and so is reading in a second language or a dense textbook. Time yourself on a page of the book you are actually reading for the best figure.
Words on a page
A page holds very different amounts of text: a large-print novel far fewer words than a mass-market paperback, a textbook more. Count the words on one full page, or the words in a typical line times the lines on a page, and type it in. Audiobooks work too: type the minutes you listen and a narration speed instead of a reading speed.
The calculator works offline, so you can plan a reading challenge on a plane.
Frequently asked questions
How many books can I read in a year at 20 minutes a day?
About 23 books of 300 pages, at an average adult speed of 238 words a minute and 250 words a page. That is 20 × 238 = 4,760 words a day, 1.74 million a year.
What is the average reading speed?
For adults reading silently in English, about 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, according to Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 studies. Reading aloud is slower, about 183 words a minute in the same review.
How long does it take to read a 300-page book?
At 250 words a page, 75,000 words. At 238 words a minute, about 5 hours 15 minutes; at 20 minutes a day, a little over two weeks.
How do I measure my own reading speed?
Read normally for exactly one minute, then count the words you covered (or count the words in a few lines and multiply by the lines you read). Do it two or three times and take the average.
Does speed reading help?
Reviews of the research find that reading much faster than normal costs understanding. Reading a little more often does more for the yearly total than trying to read faster.
Sources
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