Young Writers Society

I was wondering was is the size of the page you chose when writing your stories in Word or any other text editor. I usualy use A5 but that looks a bit small.
Does anybody know what is the size of the Harry Potter books for example?

I usually use the standard 8.5 by 11 inch letter-sized page, because that's how a manuscript would be turned in among other reasons.

But if you're just curious, break out a ruler and adjust margins or page-size accordingly. A better indicator is word count. A mass market trade paperback averages about 300 words a page.

The page size doesn't really matter while you're writing. Whichever size works best for you is the size to go with. I personally like writing with size 10 Times New Roman without any page margins visible and then formatting after I'm finished.

If you're going to try and get your story published though, you'll need to format things properly before you submit your manuscript. Wikipedia has a pretty decent overview of the standard manuscript format, though the details will vary based on type of piece and publisher.

I just use A4 - that's the page size completed manuscripts are usually submitted in: A4, size 12 font.

Thank you all for your answers. They are really helpful. I used until now A5 with 11 font but that looks a bit too small. I asked because although I read a lot, I'm quite new at writing and I always got the impression that I don't write enough and will never be able to finish a book considering that most of the books I read have over 300 pages.
I never really thought about getting my work published, but I would love to see my name on a book or something. The problem is that I live in a pretty small city and the oportunities are not very high. And thanks for the link Kyllorac.
And the ideea to count the words on the page never came to me before.
A4 also looks good.

Word count is more important (and reliable) than page count to measure length. The same word count can have completely different page counts depending on how everything is formatted. This is one of the reasons why trade paperbacks often have more pages than the hardcover editions.

300-page novels typically have word counts of around 100K.

Kyllorac wrote:Word count is more important (and reliable) than page count to measure length. The same word count can have completely different page counts depending on how everything is formatted. This is one of the reasons why trade paperbacks often have more pages than the hardcover editions.

300-page novels typically have word counts of around 100K.

Ok, I understand now. Well my story has 4.066 word and is 16 A5 pages long. By the way I just posted my first real work. It's called Outer Darkness. Check it out if you want.