STATISTICS & LITERATURE A little something that every new Author must know

“The Hell! this is outrageous!”, that was my first reaction, (also shows that I am still an amateur in this field. Have loads to learn) when MS-Word informed me that my novella’s Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is 4.8, which means that it can be read by a 5th grader.

I thought it was not a good grade. I wanted my book to have a large audience and not only 5th graders. In my mind, the grade should be higher than 12th. I started looking to find, what should be the grade level for a good novel.

And then I stumbled upon few tongue twister names and some amazing statistics, which says it purpose of fiction and novel is to make it ease for the reader. Reading Ease should be closer to 100 and grade lesser than 8.

These statistics would help you check you progress and mapping them against the best selling authors (some may take it as blasphemy) would tell you if you are going in the right direction.

Sharing with you a quick reference that I used for my work.

Green Zone for Fiction, 7.5

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Focused/Intended Group, 12.0

Wide Audience, 9.0

Wider Audience, 8.0Universal Audience,

7.9

Gunning-Fog Score & Intended Audience Group