How long does it take to read 40 pages?
A long short story, or a children's chapter book from cover to cover.
44m
11,000 words at 250 a minute
At 30 minutes a day, you would finish in about 2 days.
That is 1 session with 40 pages.
Read it with the Guild45 minutes a day would finish it in about a day.
How many words is 40 pages?
40 pages is about 11,000 words, at the trade-paperback average of 275 words a page. At 250 words a minute, that comes to 44 minutes.
We use 250 words a minute, not the 300 most calculators assume. A 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies puts silent adult reading nearer 238 for non-fiction and 260 for fiction.
Words per page move with font and trim size, so treat this as a good estimate rather than an exact figure.
- Slower (150 wpm)
- 1 hour 13 minutes
- Average (250 wpm)
- 44 minutes
- Faster (400 wpm)
- 28 minutes
What 40 pages a day gets you
40 pages a day is about 44 minutes of reading. Keep it up and an average 300-page novel takes 8 days. Here is what that looks like against books people are actually timing.
Read it with the Guild
Read your 40 pages with friends.
Read with friends online, track your books, decorate your digital bookshelf, and meet new readers. ReadersGuild is like a 24-hour book club inside your personal library.

“I built this to read with my friends a thousand miles away.”
Fabio JonathanFounder of ReadersGuild