Reading Plan Sheet
Work out the real figure for the book in your hands — count words on three pages, time yourself on one, and stop guessing.
BFCBrilliance · bfcbrilliance.com/tools/reading-time-calculator
The book
- Title
- Author
- Pages
- Words per page (counted, not guessed)
- TOTAL WORDS
- My speed (timed)
- TOTAL TIME
- Minutes per sitting
- SITTINGS TO FINISH
- Target finish date
Log your sessions — this is how you learn your real speed
| Date | Start page | End page | Minutes | Pages/hour | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The evidence and the arithmetic
- Silent, non-fiction
- 238 wpm average
- Silent, fiction
- 260 wpm average
- Reading aloud
- 183 wpm average
- Non-fiction range
- 175-300 wpm
- Fiction range
- 200-320 wpm
- Source
- Brysbaert 2019 — 190 studies, 18,573 people
- ⚠ Commonly quoted
- 250-300 — higher than the evidence
- Trade paperback
- about 275 words per page
- Dense academic
- 400+ words per page
- Total time
- pages x words per page / wpm
- ⚠ Study reading
- much slower — these figures do not apply
Getting a figure you can trust
- Words counted on THREE typical pages and averaged
- Pages that are half chapter-heading skipped when counting
- Yourself timed over ten minutes of the ACTUAL book
- A lower speed used if this is study reading, not prose
- Re-reading and note-taking time added separately for study
- Front matter, index and appendices excluded from the page count
- Pages-per-sitting compared against a real session
- The estimate revisited after the first few sessions
The number most tools use is too high
Figures of 250 to 300 words per minute circulate widely and are often stated as fact. The largest meta-analysis available — 190 studies, 18,573 participants — puts silent non-fiction reading at 238. That difference is why estimates so often come in optimistic by a fifth or more.
Count the page, then time yourself
Words per page varies from under 200 to over 400, and it affects the answer as much as your reading speed does. Counting three pages takes a minute. Timing ten minutes of real reading takes ten. Together they turn a rough guess into a figure that is actually about the book in your hands.
Study reading is a different activity
These averages describe continuous prose read for comprehension. A textbook you have to retain involves re-reading, stopping to think and taking notes — none of which is reading speed. The gap between reading a novel and studying a chapter is far larger than the gap between any two readers.