How Long Is an Audiobook? Hours for a 300-Page Book, and at 1.5x

A 300-page book usually runs about 8 to 10.5 hours as an audiobook. Most novels take 7 to 13 hours, while long classics run 25 to 100 hours. The quick formula: divide the book's word count by 9,300, the number of words ACX, Audible's audiobook production platform, says most narrators read in an hour.

To check that against real recordings, we counted the words in ten classics and compared them with their LibriVox audiobooks. The narrators averaged 151 words a minute, very close to ACX's figure, and every book is listed below with its listening time.

How long is an audiobook for a 300-page book?

About 8 to 10.5 hours at normal speed. Here is the maths.

• Words per page. Gatekeeper Press, a book publishing service, puts a 5 by 8 inch paperback page at about 240 to 260 words and a 5.5 by 8.5 inch page at about 300 to 330. Call it 250 to 330.
• Words in the book. 300 pages at 250 to 330 words is 75,000 to 99,000 words.
• Hours of audio. At 9,300 words an hour, that is about 8 to 10.5 hours.

The same estimate works for any length:

• 200 pages: about 5.5 to 7 hours
• 300 pages: about 8 to 10.5 hours
• 400 pages: about 11 to 14 hours
• 500 pages: about 13.5 to 17.5 hours

Bigger pages hold more words. Gatekeeper Press puts a 6 by 9 inch page at about 360 to 390 words, so a book printed that size runs longer than its page count suggests. If you can find the word count, use it instead of pages. It is far more reliable.

How long are famous audiobooks?

These are solo LibriVox recordings, the free volunteer recordings of public domain books. Word counts are our own count of the Project Gutenberg text, from the first line of the story to the last.

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: 26,381 words, 2 hours 47 minutes (158 words a minute)
• A Christmas Carol: 28,431 words, 2 hours 44 minutes (174 words a minute)
• The Great Gatsby: 48,032 words, 5 hours 38 minutes (142 words a minute)
• Frankenstein: 74,936 words, 7 hours 26 minutes (168 words a minute)
• The Odyssey, Samuel Butler's translation: 118,744 words, 11 hours 2 minutes (179 words a minute)
• Pride and Prejudice: 121,676 words, 13 hours 25 minutes (151 words a minute)
• Moby-Dick: 208,234 words, 24 hours 38 minutes (141 words a minute)
• The Count of Monte Cristo: 459,752 words, 54 hours 16 minutes (141 words a minute)
• War and Peace, the Maude translation: 561,870 words, 62 hours 27 minutes across four volumes (150 words a minute)
• The Bible, King James Version: 790,016 words, 100 hours 45 minutes (131 words a minute)

The median pace across the ten readers was 151 words a minute, with a range of 131 to 179. ACX's 9,300 words an hour works out to 155. So the formula is a good guide, but a particular narrator can take 15% more or less time than it predicts.

A note on how we measured. We left out prefaces, contents pages and the translator's footnotes in the Odyssey, because volunteer readers usually skip them. LibriVox recordings also include a short spoken introduction at the start of each section, so the narrators' true reading pace is slightly faster than these figures.

Is there an average audiobook length?

Not an official one. Audible, ACX and the Audio Publishers Association do not publish an average length, so be wary of any site that quotes one as fact.

What we can say is that a typical novel of 70,000 to 120,000 words comes out at roughly 7.5 to 13 hours at the ACX pace. Short books and novellas run 2 to 5 hours. Big classics and fantasy series often go past 20 hours a book.

How long does it take at 1.25x, 1.5x or 2x?

Divide the length by the speed.

• 1.25x: an hour of audio takes 48 minutes, and a 10-hour book takes 8 hours.
• 1.5x: an hour takes 40 minutes, and a 10-hour book takes 6 hours 40 minutes.
• 2x: an hour takes 30 minutes, and a 10-hour book takes 5 hours.

So Pride and Prejudice drops from 13 hours 25 minutes to just under 9 hours at 1.5x, and the King James Bible from about 101 hours to about 67.

Faster is not always better. A 2022 UCLA study found lectures at up to 2x did not hurt comprehension, but fiction carries meaning in tone and timing that speed can flatten. If you do speed up, having the words on screen helps you keep up with a fast narrator. We cover that in what speed to listen to audiobooks at.

Why the same book can have different lengths

• The narrator. Our ten readers ranged from 131 to 179 words a minute. On LibriVox, different recordings of the same book often differ by 10% or more. The Count of Monte Cristo runs from about 50 to 54 hours depending on the version.
• Abridged or unabridged. An abridged edition is cut by an editor, so it can be half the length. Check the listing says unabridged. We explain the difference in abridged vs unabridged audiobooks.
• Translation and edition. Different translations and editions of the same classic can differ a lot in length.
• Extras. Introductions, afterwords, author interviews and music add minutes.

How long will it take you to finish?

Divide the book's length by the time you listen each day.

• 30 minutes a day: a 10-hour book takes 20 days, or about 13 days at 1.5x.
• An hour a day: a 10-hour book takes 10 days, or under 7 days at 1.5x.
• A 40-minute commute both ways: a 10-hour book takes about 7 or 8 working days at normal speed.

If you keep losing track at higher speeds, reading the text along with the audio helps. HushBook transcribes an audiobook on your phone and highlights each word as the narrator says it, from 0.5x to 3x, so a fast-talking narrator does not lose you. It works with your own MP3, M4A or M4B files and the free LibriVox library built into the app. It cannot import protected files such as Audible downloads.

Sources

• ACX, "How long will my narrated audiobook be?"
• Gatekeeper Press, "How many pages will my book be?"
• Project Gutenberg, plain-text editions used for our word counts (ebooks 11, 46, 64317, 84, 1727, 1342, 2701, 1184, 2600 and 10)
• LibriVox: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, read by Kara Shallenberg
• LibriVox: A Christmas Carol, read by Glen Hallstrom
• LibriVox: The Great Gatsby, read by Kara Shallenberg
• LibriVox: Frankenstein, read by Caden Vaughn Clegg
• LibriVox: The Odyssey, read by Mark Nelson
• LibriVox: Pride and Prejudice, read by Annie Coleman Rothenberg
• LibriVox: Moby Dick, read by Stewart Wills
• LibriVox: The Count of Monte Cristo, read by David Clarke
• LibriVox: War and Peace, volume 1 of 4, read by Mark Nelson
• LibriVox: The Bible (King James), read by Michael Armenta
• Omni Calculator, audiobook speed calculator