Reading goal for 2027: how many books to aim for, and how many pages a day it takes

Last updated: 4 November 2026 · By Quicksloth

A reading goal is easier to keep when you know what it asks of you each day. Here is that daily cost for five common goals, in pages and in minutes, a way to pick your own number from last year's reading, and what to do in the autumn if you're behind. The examples come from the filled-in example file of our Book Tracker.

Short version: pages a day = books × pages per book ÷ 365. With 300-page books, 12 books a year is about 10 pages a day, 24 books about 20, 52 books about 43 and 100 books about 82. To choose your number, start from last year: the books and pages you actually read and your pages per day. Aim a little below what that pace would give over a full year, so a slow month doesn't sink the goal, and add a page goal so long books don't count against you.

What each goal takes a day

2027 has 365 days. The table assumes books of 300 pages: an assumption to make the arithmetic concrete, not a measured average. The last column uses 368 pages a book instead, the average of the 33 books that Emma, the made-up reader in our example file, finished in 2026.

For other numbers: one book every 365 ÷ books days; pages a day = books × pages per book ÷ 365; minutes a day = pages a day × minutes per page. The minutes are reading time only, with no breaks. For audiobooks, use the length of the recordings instead of pages.

Where the minutes come from

A review of 190 studies by Marc Brysbaert (Journal of Memory and Language, 2019, read on 4 November 2026) estimates that adults read English silently at about 260 words a minute for fiction and 238 for non-fiction, with most adults between 200 and 320 words a minute for fiction. How many words fit on a page depends on the edition; we assume 300. So one page takes about 300 ÷ 260 = 1.15 minutes, and that is the minutes column above.

Both numbers are averages and assumptions. Your own speed takes ten minutes to measure: read with a timer, count the pages, and divide. 8 pages in 10 minutes is 1.25 minutes a page, so 24 books of 300 pages would be 19.7 × 1.25 = about 25 minutes a day instead of 23.

Set your goal from last year

Last year's real numbers are a better start than a round one. Write down three things: books read, pages read, and the days they cover. In our Book Tracker, type last year in Reading year on the Start Here tab for books and pages read; the Finished dates in the Library give you the days. Any list with finished dates and pages works too.

Emma's 2026 in the example file: 33 books, 12,140 pages, the last one finished on 19 October.

• Pages per book: 12,140 ÷ 33 = 368.
• Pages per day: 1 January to 19 October is 292 days, so 12,140 ÷ 292 = 41.6 pages a day.
• One book every 292 ÷ 33 = 8.8 days. The file's Average days per book says 11.3: that one counts each book from its Started to its Finished date, and Emma often has two books going at once.

Then turn that pace into a number for 2027:

1. The ceiling. The same pace for all 365 days: 41.6 × 365 = about 15,200 pages, or 41 books of 368 pages. That assumes no slow weeks, so it's the top, not the goal.
2. Room for slow stretches. Holidays, busy months, a long book that drags. Our rule of thumb, not a measured figure: plan on 85 to 90% of last year's pace. For Emma that's 35 to 37 books.
3. A number you'll like hitting. Emma picks 36, three a month. At her 368 pages a book that's 36.3 pages a day, less than the 41.6 she read in 2026.

If last year felt like a race, start lower: a goal you beat in December is more fun than one you drop in June. If you didn't keep track last year, count the books you remember finishing in the last three months and multiply by four, or start with 12 and raise it in the spring.

A page goal next to the book goal

A book goal counts a 100-page novella and a 1,000-page classic the same, so it quietly pushes you towards short books. Emma's Reading Stats show how much pages can swing with the same number of books: in August 2026 she finished 3 books with 2,396 pages (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Anna Karenina and The Count of Monte Cristo), in September 3 books with 656 pages.

A page goal next to the book goal evens that out: in a month of long books you fall behind on books but stay on track with pages. For Emma's 36 books of 368 pages, that's 13,248 pages; a round 13,000 will do. In the Book Tracker it goes in Page goal (optional) on Start Here, and Pages read then shows your share of it.

When you're behind

How to work out the books expected by today and whether you're ahead or behind is explained, with an example, in How to track a reading challenge in a spreadsheet. Here is what to do about it.

In the example file, Emma's goal is 33. On 4 November 2026, day 308 of the year, Start Here shows Expected by today 27.8 and Pace: 5 books ahead. Those two cells follow today's date, so in the file they change every day; the numbers here are fixed on 4 November 2026. Had she typed 40 as her Book goal, the same day would show 40 × 308 ÷ 365 = 33.8 expected and 1 book behind, with 7 books to go in the 58 days left (4 November to 31 December counted): one every 8.3 days, a bit faster than her one every 8.8 days so far. What she could do, in order:

1. Finish what's already started. Anne of the Island (272 pages) and David Copperfield (880 pages) are on her Currently Reading shelf: 2 of the 7.
2. Pick shorter books next. Her TBR shelf lists the pages of each book. Her five shortest are His Last Bow (208), The Valley of Fear (224), Anne's House of Dreams (256), The Return of Sherlock Holmes (336) and Walden (352): 1,376 pages. With the two books in progress, that's at most 2,528 pages in 58 days, 43.6 a day, close to her 41.6. More on choosing from your list in How to organize a TBR list.
3. Or lower the goal. The goal is a tool you set yourself, so it's yours to change. Moving from 40 to 36 in November and reading happily beats rushing through books you won't remember.
4. Don't force a book for the count. If a book has stalled, mark it DNF and move on. It won't count towards the goal, but it gives you back the days.

Start your own

Any spreadsheet with a finished date and pages for each book can do the sums above. Our Book Tracker does them from one Library of 1,000 rows: on Start Here you type a Book goal (and a Page goal, if you like), and it shows books read against the goal with a progress bar, Expected by today and your Pace, pages, hours, average rating and average days per book; Reading Stats has books, pages and hours month by month. Your TBR shelf builds itself from the status, with the pages of each book. DNF books never count against your goal or your average rating. It works in Excel and Google Sheets and is coming soon to our Etsy shop.

Want to write more than numbers? See Reading journal spreadsheet: what to write down for each book.

Emma, her books and her numbers are made up, from the example file of our Book Tracker; every number on this page was recalculated from the file. The 300 pages a book and the 300 words a page are our assumptions; the reading speed comes from the review linked above, read on 4 November 2026. The books are classics in the public domain in the United States. We used AI tools to help write this article and the calculations.