How many books can you read in a year?

What a few minutes a day add up to

The number of books depends on two things: how long you read and how long your books are. Take a 300-page book read at 40 pages an hour. That is 7.5 hours per book. If you read every day, a year gives you:

• 10 minutes a day: about 60 hours, or 8 books;
• 15 minutes: about 90 hours, or 12 books;
• 20 minutes: about 120 hours, or 16 books;
• 30 minutes: about 180 hours, or 24 books;
• 45 minutes: about 275 hours, or 37 books;
• 60 minutes: 365 hours, or about 49 books.

Most people do not read every single day. If you read on five days out of seven, take about 70% of these numbers: 20 minutes on weekdays comes to about 12 books a year.

Use your own books and your own pace

The figures above are an example, not a norm. A 600-page novel takes twice as long as a 300-page one, and dense non-fiction takes longer per page than a thriller. Your pace also changes from book to book.

To get a more honest number, time yourself for a few sessions and work out your pages per hour. The guide on how many pages you can read in an hour shows how, and how to estimate the time a particular book will take.

Set the goal in minutes, and let the books follow

A goal of 30 books a year sounds clear, but it does not depend only on you. It depends on what you choose to read. Long books start to feel like a setback, and in December it is tempting to pick short ones just to reach the number.

Minutes a day are fully in your hands. Ten minutes is ten minutes whether the book is thin or thick. Choose a daily number you can manage on a busy day, and treat the number of books as the result. The guide to building a daily reading habit has more on choosing that number.

If you still want a number of books, work it out from the list above and keep it loose. A year with fewer, longer books is not a worse year.

Check in once a month, not every day

A single day says little about a year. Once a month, look at how much you read and adjust: if 20 minutes keeps slipping, lower the goal; if it feels easy, raise it. Changing the goal in the middle of the year is part of the plan, not a failure.

In Pagetime, the Stats tab shows a summary of each month: how much you read, how many books you finished, how many you added and how many notes you wrote. The daily goal is 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes, and you can change it at any time.

Look back at the year

At the end of the year, look at what the minutes turned into: the books you finished, the months when reading went well and the ones when it did not.

In Pagetime, the Year in review in Stats shows your reading time for the year and how many books you finished. With a subscription, it also shows the days you read and met your goal, your longest streak, time by month and by hour of the day, your average and longest session, the books you finished in order, your notes and your top genres.

The free version holds up to 5 books and includes 20 page scans with text recognition in total. Deleting a note does not restore a used scan. Notes and the timer work offline without an account; sync is free after signing in. A subscription removes the book and scan limits and unlocks your full stats history, year in review and folder export. Pagetime is coming to iPhone and Android; you can leave your email below to hear when it is available. Until then, jot down your minutes in a notebook.

This independent guide is published by Pagetime and is not authorized, sponsored or endorsed by Apple Inc. or Google LLC.