The most honest answer to “how long does it take to write a book?” is: it depends. On the length of the book, the genre, how many words you write per day, how much research the book requires, and how many revisions it needs before it is ready.
But “it depends” is not useful if you are trying to plan your writing year. This guide gives you the actual numbers, realistic timelines for every genre and writing schedule, along with the key factors that speed up or slow down the process, and a simple method for calculating your own personal writing timeline.
The good news: most books are closer to completion than their authors think, because most authors have never done the arithmetic.
According to a survey by Reedsy, one of the largest platforms connecting authors with publishing professionals, most authors take between 6 months and 1 year to write a book. For first-time authors specifically, the range is typically 4 to 12 months for a completed first draft.
But these averages conceal enormous variation. Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in three weeks. J.R.R. Tolkien took twelve years to write The Lord of the Rings. N.K. Jemisin wrote The Broken Kingdoms in eight months while working a fifty-five-hour week at a day job. Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in three weeks.
The average is a starting point for planning, not a benchmark for measuring yourself against. What matters is not how quickly you write your book compared to other authors. What matters is whether you finish it.
Everything else is a variable, but two factors drive the timeline more than any other:
1. The word count of your finished book. A 40,000-word self-help book and a 90,000-word novel are very different projects. More words = more time, all else being equal.
2. How many words you write per day. A writer producing 1,000 words per day finishes a first draft twice as fast as one producing 500 words per day. This is arithmetic, not inspiration.
Everything else, research time, revision depth, the complexity of the plot, the difficulty of the argument, is additional time layered on top of these two variables.
Here is a simple method that works for any book:
Step 1: Find your target word count. Use the genre word count table below, or estimate based on similar published books in your category.
Step 2: Find your daily word count. Spend three or four sessions writing in conditions similar to your actual writing routine. How many words do you produce in a session? Average them.
Step 3: Divide and add buffer. Divide your target word count by your daily word count to get the number of writing days needed. Add 25% to that number to account for slow days, research gaps, and life interruptions.
Step 4: Factor in your weekly writing days. If you write 5 days per week, divide your total writing days by 5 to get the number of weeks. If you write 3 days per week, divide by 3.
Example: A 75,000-word novel, written at 500 words per day, 5 days per week.
Example: A 50,000-word self-help book, written at 700 words per day, 6 days per week.
This is the drafting phase only. Add revision time and editing time on top of this.
| Genre | Typical Word Count | Average Draft Time (500 words/day, 5 days/week) | Average Draft Time (1,000 words/day, 5 days/week) |
| Literary fiction | 80,000 – 100,000 | 8 – 10 months | 4 – 5 months |
| Commercial fiction | 70,000 – 90,000 | 7 – 9 months | 3.5 – 4.5 months |
| Romance | 55,000 – 75,000 | 5.5 – 7.5 months | 3 – 4 months |
| Mystery thriller | 70,000 – 90,000 | 7 – 9 months | 3.5 – 4.5 months |
| Young adult | 55,000 – 80,000 | 5.5 – 8 months | 3 – 4 months |
| Self-help / motivational | 35,000 – 55,000 | 3.5 – 5.5 months | 2 – 3 months |
| Memoir | 60,000 – 80,000 | 6 – 8 months | 3 – 4 months |
| Spirituality / philosophy | 40,000 – 65,000 | 4 – 6.5 months | 2 – 3.5 months |
| Business / non-fiction | 30,000 – 55,000 | 3 – 5.5 months | 1.5 – 3 months |
These are drafting timelines only, not the full timeline to a published book. See the next section for the complete picture.
One of the most useful tools for planning a writing timeline is understanding exactly how your daily output translates to finished months. This table assumes 5 writing days per week with a 25% buffer added to the target word count.
| Daily Word Count | 40,000-word book | 60,000-word book | 80,000-word book | 100,000-word book |
| 200 words/day | 10 months | 15 months | 20 months | 25 months |
| 300 words/day | 7 months | 10 months | 13 months | 17 months |
| 500 words/day | 4 months | 6 months | 8 months | 10 months |
| 750 words/day | 2.5 months | 4 months | 5.5 months | 7 months |
| 1,000 words/day | 2 months | 3 months | 4 months | 5 months |
| 1,500 words/day | 1.5 months | 2 months | 2.5 months | 3.5 months |
The most important lesson from this table: daily word count has a dramatically larger effect on your timeline than almost any other factor. Going from 300 to 500 words per day does not sound like much, but it cuts the time to complete an 80,000-word novel from 13 months to 8 months.
For most Indian authors writing around a full-time job, a realistic daily word count target is 300 to 500 words on working days, with potentially longer sessions on weekends. At 400 words per day, five days per week, a 70,000-word novel takes approximately 9 to 10 months.
The first draft is only one phase of the journey from idea to published book. Here is the full timeline:
Planning and outlining: 1 to 4 weeks for most authors. More for complex fiction with world-building; less for straightforward non-fiction.
First draft: 3 to 12 months, depending on genre, word count, and daily output. See the tables above.
Rest period before revision: 2 to 6 weeks. Stepping away from the draft before revising gives you the perspective to read it as a reader rather than as the writer who produced it.
Revision: 1 to 3 months for a thorough structural and prose revision. More for books with significant structural problems.
Beta reader feedback: 3 to 6 weeks for readers to provide feedback; additional 2 to 4 weeks to incorporate the feedback into a revised draft.
Professional editing and proofreading: 4 to 8 weeks with a professional editor, depending on the manuscript’s condition and the depth of editing needed.
Submission to publisher (traditional publishing): Publisher response times in India range from 4 to 16 weeks. After acceptance, editorial development, production, and release scheduling typically adds 6 months to 1.5 years.
Production and publication (self-publishing): Cover design, formatting, and uploading to platforms typically takes 4 to 8 weeks after editing is complete.
Total time, traditional publishing: From starting to write to holding the published book, the realistic range for most first-time Indian authors is 18 months to 4 years.
Total time, self-publishing: From starting to write to the book being available online, the realistic range is 8 months to 18 months.
These timelines feel long when you are at the beginning of the process. They feel short when you look back at the quality of work produced.
Editing while drafting. The single biggest time-waster in the first draft phase. Going back to revise yesterday’s work before writing today’s new words keeps authors perpetually in the early pages of their manuscript. Write forward. Revise later.
Writing without an outline. Writers who do not outline often write large amounts of material that does not fit the eventual structure of the book, material that must be cut or extensively reworked in revision. An outline reduces wasted drafting time substantially.
Inconsistent writing schedule. Writing sporadically, in occasional bursts with long gaps between, is far slower than short daily sessions. The daily habit maintains momentum and familiarity with the manuscript that irregular writing cannot replicate.
Excessive research before writing. For non-fiction particularly, over-researching before writing begins can delay the first draft indefinitely. Batch the essential research before drafting, write what you know, and fill research gaps in revision.
Perfectionism. Trying to produce a polished final text in the first draft slows output dramatically. The first draft exists to generate raw material. Polish comes in revision.
A clear outline. Knowing what each chapter or scene needs to accomplish before you sit down to write it eliminates the aimless periods that drain sessions.
Daily writing, even briefly. Fifteen to thirty minutes every day produces more total output over a month than one long weekend session, because daily writing keeps the manuscript alive in your mind and maintains the momentum of forward progress.
Stopping mid-sentence. Ending each writing session in the middle of a sentence or thought rather than at the end of a chapter removes the resistance of beginning from nothing the next day, you are completing something already in motion.
Reading in your genre throughout the writing process. Reading comparable published books reminds you of the quality to aim for, provides structural models, and keeps the creative energy flowing.
Real-world examples help calibrate expectations:
Stephen King aims to complete a first draft in three months, writing ten pages (roughly 2,000 words) per day. He considers this the maximum time a first draft should take.
J.K. Rowling spent five years developing the concept and world of Harry Potter before writing the first book. The actual drafting was considerably faster.
Amish Tripathi wrote The Immortals of Meluha, the first book of the Shiva Trilogy, over a period of several years while running his family business, writing in evenings and weekends.
Chetan Bhagat wrote Five Point Someone while working as an investment banker, writing during early mornings and late nights over approximately two years.
N.K. Jemisin wrote The Broken Kingdoms in eight months while working a fifty-five-hour week.
Jack Kerouac wrote the first draft of On the Road in three weeks. (He had been preparing the material for years beforehand.)
J.R.R. Tolkien took twelve years to write The Lord of the Rings.
Donna Tartt spent over ten years on The Goldfinch.
The range of these examples, from three weeks to twelve years, illustrates that writing speed is not a measure of quality or commitment. What matters is the consistency of the practice and the eventual completion of the work.
Based on survey data from Reedsy and industry observation, most first-time authors take between 4 and 12 months to complete a first draft, with 6 months being the most commonly cited average. This assumes consistent writing of 300 to 500 words per day. The full process, including revision, editing, and submission, typically takes 18 months to 3 years before a book is published.
For working Indian authors writing around a full-time job, 300 to 500 words per day on writing days is both realistic and productive. At 400 words per day, five days per week, you will complete an 80,000-word first draft in approximately 10 to 12 months. 1,000 words per day is achievable for authors with more dedicated writing time, and reduces that timeline to 4 to 5 months.
It depends primarily on word count and research requirements. A 50,000-word self-help book with a clear outline can be drafted faster than a 90,000-word novel requiring intricate plotting. However, non-fiction that requires extensive research, academic non-fiction, narrative non-fiction drawing on primary sources, biography, can take longer than commercial fiction of comparable length.
Rushing the drafting phase, setting an unrealistically demanding daily word count target, often backfires because the pressure produces worse writing and higher rates of burnout and abandonment. A sustainable pace that you can maintain for months is more valuable than an ambitious pace you cannot sustain for weeks. The books that exist are infinitely more useful than the books that were abandoned because the pace was unsustainable.
For most first drafts, a thorough structural and prose revision takes 1 to 3 months. Drafts with significant structural problems, a plot that does not hold together, arguments that are not clearly organised, require longer. Drafts that were carefully outlined and written with structural awareness tend to require less revision time.
Yes, significantly. Writers who outline before drafting write less wasted material, scenes, chapters, and arguments that do not fit the final structure, and spend less time during drafting figuring out what comes next. An outline typically reduces the total drafting time by 20 to 40 percent compared to writing without any structural plan.
With traditional publishing in India: after submitting your manuscript, publisher response times range from 4 to 16 weeks. After acceptance, editorial development, production, and release scheduling typically adds 6 months to 1.5 years. The total time from manuscript submission to published book is typically 9 months to 2 years.
With self-publishing: after completing professional editing, cover design, formatting, and uploading to platforms typically takes 4 to 8 weeks. Your book can be available on Amazon India within days of being uploaded.
Completely. Most published authors’ first manuscripts took more than a year from beginning to completion, particularly when writing around full-time work and family obligations. The only timeline that matters is the one that results in a finished, publishable manuscript. A book completed in two years is infinitely more valuable than a book abandoned at the halfway point after six months of frustrated rushing.
The most important calculation is not how long it will take you to write your book. It is what your daily writing habit actually looks like. A writer who commits to 400 words every day, five days a week, will have a complete novel draft in less than a year, regardless of how they feel about the process, regardless of inspiration, regardless of whether any given day’s writing is good.
When your manuscript is complete, Anecdote Publishing House welcomes direct submissions from debut and established authors across fiction, non-fiction, self-help, romance, mystery thriller, young adult, spirituality, family and relationship, contemporary fiction, and society and culture. We publish at zero cost to the author, distribute to over 100 bookshops across India, and provide full editorial, design, and PR support.
