The Harry Potter books are popular, and once someone reads the first book in the series, they often end up reading the entire series. What isn’t often considered is the sheer number of words a person who reads the entire series consumes. For those who like to keep track of their reading word count — or those who want to encourage their kids to read more — the Harry Potter books series is an excellent way to do so.
So, how many total words are there in the Harry Potter series? The answer may surprise you. The total number of words for the Harry Potter series is over 1 million words. That’s correct. If you want your kids to read over one million words in a short period of time, one of your best chances is to get them interested in the Harry Potter book series.
In order to reach the 1 million plus word count, it’s necessary to read all seven books which are part of the series. These include the following:
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stones
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Not all the books are the same when it comes to the number of words in them. The book with the least total number of words is Sorcerer’s Stones, while the book with the most words is Order of the Phoenix. Only 2 of the 7 Harry Potter books came in at under 100,000 words (Sorcerer’s Stones and Chamber of Secrets) which happened to be the first two books in the series. Only one book (Order of the Phoenix) topped 200,000 words, but there were two books that came close with more than 190,000 words (Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows). When added all together, the Harry Potter books contain 1,084,170 words. Below you’ll find the total word count numbers for each book in the Harry Potter series:
How many words are in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stones? There are 76,944 words.
How many words are in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? There are 85,141 words.
How many words are in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? There are 107,253 words.
How many words are in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? There are 190,637 words.
How many words are in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? There are 257,045 words.
How many words are in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? There are 168,923 words.
How many words are in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? There are 198,227 words.
While knowing the total number of words in the Harry Potter series isn’t going to convince anyone to read all the books, knowing the total word count is an excellent way to encourage kids to read more. Reading over 1 million words is a great accomplishment which can be celebrated in addition to the fun and adventure that comes with reading the books. Now you know you can congratulate anyone who has read all the Harry Potter books of reading more than a million words.
10 Surprising Facts About Harry Potter
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Inside Foster Grant
Date August 3, 2017
If you’re a big reader then you’ve probably read a mixture of very short and very long books in your lifetime. And you’ve probably wondered how long some of your favourite stories are. But because time sometimes slows down or speeds up when we’re engrossed in a good story, it’s very hard to compare the length of different stories by reflecting on our experiences. The number of pages also doesn’t help much, as publishers use different typefaces, page sizes, font sizes, etc. The ultimate measure of a story’s size is its wordcount, however, so the literary geeks here at Foster Grant have put together a list of many of the most popular books and short stories in history for you. Make sure you take a look at our range of reading glasses if you need a little help reading your next book!
What’s the Difference Between a Novel, a Novella, and a Short Story?
First off, it’s important to be able to tell the difference between a novel and a novella, a short story and a piece of flash fiction.
- Flash fiction is anything from 100 to 500 words
- A short story is usually anything from 1,000 to 8,000 words, but many are often longer
- A novella is usually between 20,000 and 50,000 words
- The average novel is usually between 80,000 and 100,000 words
- An epic novel is anything over 110,000 words
Word Counts in Different Genres
There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to what word count a novel in a particular genre should be. However, there are averages and rough word counts expected by publishers. Of course, figures differ depending on which publisher you ask, so the following figures are merely approximations derived from various sources.
- Crime – 90,000 to 100,000 words
- Thrillers – 70,000 to 90,000 words
- Literary – 80,000 to 110,000 words
- Romance – 40,000 to 100,000 words
- Fantasy – 90,000 to 110,000 words
- Horror – 80,000 to 100,000 words
- Science – 90,000 to 125,000 words
- Historical – 100,000 to 120,000 words
Literary Fiction
Literary fiction is a slightly difficult genre to define sometimes, as it tends to contain a mixture of all genres. One thing that seems to connect all books considered ‘literary’ is that they are all considered to be intelligently written. However, there are intelligent books in all genres, so literary fiction is really just the upper echelons of books considered ‘good’ by revered critics and academics.
- To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee – 100,388 words
- Gullivers Travels, Jonathan Swift – 107,349 words
- Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte – 107,945 words
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain – 109,571 words
- As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner – 56,695 words
- Lord of the Flies, William Golding – 59,900 words
- Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Wolf – 63,422 words
- Black Beauty, Anna Sewell – 59,635 words
- The Colour Purple, Alice Walker – 66,556 words
- Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson – 66,950 words
- The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway – 67,707 words
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde – 78,462 words
Epic Literary Fiction Novels
Epic novels are works of fiction that are 110,000 words or over.
- Ulysses, James Joyce – 265,222 words
- Bleak House, Charles Dickens – 360,947 words
- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens – 183,349 words
- Les Miserables, Victor Hugo – 530,982 words
- War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy – 561,304 words
- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy – 349,736 words
- Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell – 418,053 words
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville – 206,052 words
- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway – 174,106 words
- Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden – 186,418 words
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë – 183,858 words
- Catch-22, Joseph Heller – 174,269 words
- Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen – 126,194 words
- Atonement, Ian McEwan – 123,378 words
- Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry – 365,712 words
- Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand – 561,996 words
- Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky – 211,591 words
- The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck – 169,481 words
- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 144,523 words
Fantasy Books
Fantasy readers usually expect all their books to be epic. So, most of the famous fantasy novels are over 110,000 words – although there are a few exceptions…
- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke – 308,931 words
- American Gods, Neil Gaiman – 183,222 words
- The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett – 65,113 words
- Eragon, Christopher Paolini – 157,000 words
Word counts of the books in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series:
- A Wizard of Earthsea – 56,533 words
- The Tombs of Atuan – 45,939 words
- The Farthest Shore – 60,591 words
- Tehanu – 99,200 words
- Tales from Earthsea – 128,960 words
- The Other Wind – 89,280 words
Word counts of the books in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series:
- A Game of Thrones – 298,000 words
- A Clash of Kings – 326,000 words
- A Storm of Swords – 424,000 words
- A Feast for Crows – 300,000 words
- A Dance with Dragons – 422,000 words
- The entire A Song of Ice and Fire series (so far) – 1,770,000 words
Word counts of the books in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series:
- The Hobbit – 95,356 words
- The Fellowship of the Ring – 187,790 words
- The Two Towers – 156,198 words
- The Return of the King – 137,115 words
- The entire Lord of the Rings series (including The Hobbit) – 576,459 words
Word counts of the books in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series:
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – 76,944 words
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – 85,141 words
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – 107,253 words
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – 190,637 words
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – 257,045 words
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – 168,923 words
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – 198,227 words
- The entire Harry Potter series – 1,084,170 words
Word counts of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series:
- The Golden Compass – 112,815 words
- The Subtle Knife – 109,120 words
- The Amber Spyglass – 168,640 words
Word counts of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia series:
- The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe – 38,421 words
- Prince Caspian – 46,290 words
- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – 53,960 words
- The Silver Chair – 51,022 words
- The Horse and His Boy – 48,029 words
- The Magician’s Nephew – 64,480 words
- The Last Battle – 43,333 words
Science Fiction
- The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger – 155,717 words
- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury – 46,118 words
- The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury – 64,768 words
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley – 63,766 words
- War of the Worlds, G. Well – 59,796 words
- The Time Machine, G. Well – 32,149 words
- Nineteen Eight-Four, George Orwell – 88,942 words
- Dune, Frank Herbert – 187,240 words
- The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin – 94,240 words
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Phillip K. Dick – 79,360 words
- Frankenstein, Mary Shelley – 74,800 words
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Since the first Harry Potter book was released in 1997, more than 500 million copies have been sold, making them some of the best-selling books ever published.
![How Many Words In A Harry Potter Book? [A Word Count Guide]](https://word-counter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/How-Many-Words-In-A-Harry-Potter-Book-A-Word-Count-Guide.jpg)
Since then, the fictional universe that the books created has gained popularity all over the world and is still well-known today, more than 25 years after the publication of the first book.
JK Rowling created a world that a whole generation of children grew up with, and still love to this day, as well as inviting new generations to experience the magic.
With 7 novels, 8 movies, 6 short stories, 2 theme parks, and a play, the Harry Potter universe just continues to expand.
The 7 novels were what brought the world of Harry Potter into the limelight.
The original series wrapped up back in 2007, yet they are still being bought and read endlessly to this day.
How long would it take the average person to read a Harry Potter book? It depends on which book you choose to read, as some are a lot longer than others.
One thing is for certain: if you were to combine all 7 books, there would be a lot of books to read.
In this article, we will look at how many words are in each Harry Potter book, what the average word count is in the whole series, and how they compare to other YA series that came out around that time.
So, let’s get started.
How Many Books Are in The ‘Harry Potter’ Series?
The main Harry Potter series of novels began when Rowling published ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ – or, ‘The Sorcerer’s Stone’ – in 1997, and concluded when she released ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ in 2007.
Within a short span of a decade, Rowling had established an entire universe, as well as beginning and concluding the adventures of a young Harry Potter during his time at Hogwarts.
In the original series, there were 7 books altogether:
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003)
- Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2005)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)
If you were to add up every single page of every single book in the original Harry Potter series, it would equal to 4,100 pages altogether. That’s a lot of reading!
The Word Count For Each ‘Harry Potter’ Book
Between the 7 novels included in the original Harry Potter series, there were a lot of words to be read.
However, as you will notice while reading our list, some of the books were much longer than others.
Rowling started off writing shorter books, and went on to add many more pages to each story as the series progressed.
Here are the word counts for each of the Harry Potter books.
Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone (1997)
The first novel of the series, The Philosopher’s Stone, was the shortest book of the entire series, only containing 309 pages.
Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone contains 76,944 words altogether.
Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets
The second book in the series was released only a year after the first, and was only 32 pages longer, with 341 pages.
Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets contains 85,141 words altogether.
Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban
As the series got darker, the third novel was a lot longer than the previous two, containing 435 pages.
Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban contains 107,253 words altogether.
Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire
The four entry to the series was a lot longer than its predecessors as it gradually became a more mature series for older readers, with 734 pages.
Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire contains 190,637 words altogether.
Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix
The fifth entry in the series is not only the longest book in the series up to this point, but is actually the longest book in the entire series, with 870 pages.
Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix contains 257,045 words altogether.
Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince
The sixth book in the series was a lot shorter than its predecessor, yet still one of the longer books in the series, with 652 pages.
Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince contains 168,293 words altogether.
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows
The seventh and final novel in the Harry Potter series is the second-longest book in the series, second to The Order of The Phoenix, with 759 pages.
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows contains 198,227 words altogether.
The Average Word Count For The ‘Harry Potter’ Series
So, as you can see, it can be difficult to answer the question, ‘how many words are in a Harry Potter book?’ with a straightforward answer.
Each book has a different length, so it would be impossible to say an exact number.
The word count of all seven books together is 1,084,170, and the average word count of a single Harry Potter book would be, roughly, 154,881 words.
Of course, you need to take into consideration that the first two books of the series were both under 100,000 words, and the longest novel in the series contained 257,045 words… so, each book has very different, incomparable lengths and word counts.
Final Thoughts
In the entirety of the Harry Potter series, there are 1,084,170 words spread between the 7 novels.
There is an average count of 154,881 words in a Harry Potter book, although some of them have a lot more, and some have a lot less.
The first two books in the series have less than 100,00 words, but as the series progresses, the word count increases significantly, with the longest novel of the series – Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix – containing a whopping 257,045 words.
It can be difficult to give a definite number of words for a single Harry Potter novel, as each one differs so greatly in length, but, as a rough indication, there are around 150,000 words in your average Harry Potter book.
We hope you found this article helpful.
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Hi, my name is Alan Reiner and I have been in the writing industry for almost seven years. I write articles that can span from 200 words all the way to 20,000 words every single day. How do I do it? With a lot of determination.
All my way through school and college, I hated long-form assignments. I could never get into the groove of working on one piece for an extended period of time. My pieces were always late because I didn’t have the motivation to type them, let alone edit them.
Word Counts By Title
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone / Sorcerer’s Stone — 77,325
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — 84,799
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — 106,821
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — 190,858
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — 257,154
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince — 169,441
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — 198,227
Different Editions
British and American English
You may notice that the first book in her series has two titles. That change came from a suggestion from Arthur Levine of Scholastic Books, who thought that American audiences would prefer the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. In addition to the title change, the U.S. edition of the book had a number of other changes, including swapping the word “sellotape” for the term “scotch tape.” In the publishing industry, it’s also typical for small errors to be revised in a new printing of a book. Obviously, every small change can impact the total word count. For that reason, even if you look at two different versions of the book in English, they might not have the exact same number of words.
Translations
Since the Harry Potter books have been incredibly popular around the world, it’s probably no surprise that they’ve been translated into lots of other languages. According to Gina Barton, writing for Vox, the books have been translated into more than 60 different tongues. She writes, “The books are filled with a tricky mix of wordplay, invented words, songs, allusions, British cultural references, and more.” Translators didn’t have an easy task, reworking Rowling’s series.
Take the longest book, Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix, which contains around 257,154 words. Whereas the Amazon Kindle version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is 412 pages in English, it is 896 pages in Spanish and 1,030 pages in French. Depending on the language, the length and word count for each translation of the book will be different. The total word count for the entire series has a unique number for each language, too.
Here’s the good news. Although the number of words may vary from one country to the next, you can count on Hogwarts to be a magical place. And, whether you’re reading the book in Chinese, Arabic, or Portuguese, it’s probably safe to assume that Lord Voldemort acts just as sneaky in every translation.
Sources:
- https://www.hp-lexicon.org/differences-changes-text/
- https://medium.com/@kevinskih/word-count-in-famous-books-7f41550c541c
- https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/harry-potter-becomes-best-selling-book-series-in-history-with-more-than-500-million-copies
- https://nymag.com/vindicated/2016/11/years-of-rejection-just-made-j-k-rowling-more-determined.html
- https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/18/13316332/harry-potter-translations
Kari Lisa Johnson
I’m an award-winning playwright with a penchant for wordplay. After earning a perfect score on the Writing SAT, I worked my way through Brown University by moonlighting as a Kaplan Test Prep tutor. I received a BA with honors in Literary Arts (Playwriting)—which gave me the opportunity to study under Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel. In my previous roles as new media producer with Rosetta Stone, director of marketing for global ventures with The Juilliard School, and vice president of digital strategy with Up & Coming Media, I helped develop the voice for international brands. From my home office in Maui, Hawaii, I currently work on freelance and ghostwriting projects.
I bet you love reading books with exciting stories and adventures, beautiful descriptions, well-crafted characters, and the author’s attention to detail. You may be a translator, copywriter, or writer who enjoys the magic of words. And of course, you wondered how many words or characters are in this or that book! Today we’ll carry out the Harry Potter word count — everyone’s favorite book series!
Just imagine, if you’ve read all of the «Harry Potter» books, then you’ve read at least 1,227,000 words or 6,667,911 characters!
We downloaded eight books about Harry Potter in PDF format, dragged the files into the word counter window, and clicked the count button. Just a couple of seconds later, and we got the following Harry Potter word count results.
The Harry Potter average word count is about 153,000 words. Is that a lot or a little? When a book fascinates and engages you in its world, any number of words is not enough. Because when you like a book, you don’t want it to end. But still, let’s try to compare Harry Potter’s average word count with our other favorite books. For example, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum contains 42,636 words. At the same time, “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra has 430,269 words.
| Book No | Harry Potter book series | Word count |
| Book 5 | The Order Of The Phoenix | 279,058 |
| Book 7 | The Deathly Hallows | 213,395 |
| Book 4 | The Goblet Of Fire | 207,544 |
| Book 6 | The Half-Blood Of Prince | 183,727 |
| Book 3 | The Prisoner Of Azkaban | 117,407 |
| Book 2 | The Chamber Of Secrets | 92,828 |
| Book 1 | The Philosopher’s | 83,967 |
| Book 8 | The Cursed Child | 49,074 |
| Book average word count | 153,375 | |
| Total word count in all books | 1,227,000 |
| Book No | Harry Potter book series | Character count |
| Book 5 | The Order Of The Phoenix | 1,523,190 |
| Book 7 | The Deathly Hallows | 1,162,757 |
| Book 4 | The Goblet Of Fire | 1,122,757 |
| Book 6 | The Half-Blood Of Prince | 1,003,219 |
| Book 3 | The Prisoner Of Azkaban | 640,155 |
| Book 2 | The Chamber Of Secrets | 503,613 |
| Book 1 | The Philosopher’s | 449,278 |
| Book 8 | The Cursed Child | 262,942 |
| Book average character count | 833,489 | |
| Total character count in all books | 6,667,911 |
