How many pages should a book preview show?
By the 360book team · 10 October 2026 · 3 min read
A preview has one job: to let a reader find out whether your book is for them. Show too little and they cannot tell. Show too much and you have given the book away. There is no single correct number, but there are reliable rules of thumb, and they differ by the kind of book.
The ten per cent habit
Large ebook shops have trained readers to expect a free sample of roughly the first tenth of a book. For a 300-page novel that is 30 pages, which usually means the first two or three chapters. It is a sensible ceiling. Few readers finish a sample that long; most have made up their minds well before the end of it.
On 360book a preview can hold up to 40 pages, and a preview of 10 to 20 pages is enough for most books. Shorter previews also load faster, which matters to anyone reading on mobile data.
Novels and short stories
Share the opening, and share enough of it for something to happen. The first chapter is the natural unit. If your first chapter is very short, include the second. What matters is where the preview stops. Ending in the middle of a paragraph looks like a mistake. Ending at a chapter break is tidy. Ending on a question the reader wants answered is best of all.
Look at how the classics on this site do it. The preview of Treasure Island stops with the old captain roaring for silence in the inn parlour, and the preview of Sherlock Holmes stops as the mysterious client rings the doorbell. In both cases you know the voice of the book and you want the next page.
Resist the urge to skip ahead to your favourite scene. A reader who buys the book will start at page one, so page one is what they need to judge.
Non-fiction
Non-fiction readers ask two questions: does this book cover what I need, and can this author explain things clearly? The table of contents answers the first, so always include it. The introduction answers the second. If the introduction is mostly acknowledgements and background, add the opening pages of the first real chapter as well.
For practical books such as cookbooks, textbooks and guides, one complete, useful unit is more persuasive than twenty pages of preamble. Show one whole recipe, one worked example or one full lesson, so the reader can see exactly what they will get three hundred times over.
Poetry
A collection of poems is not read from the front, and it does not need to be sampled from the front. Choose four to eight poems that show your range, including at least one that readers tend to remember. Keep each poem whole. A poem cut off at the bottom of a page is worse than no poem.
Picture books, comics and art books
These are judged with the eyes, and they are short, so percentages mislead. A 32-page picture book cannot give away ten pages. Three or four spreads are enough to show the style of the art and the rhythm of the text. For a comic, a complete opening scene of six to eight pages works well, ending on the page-turn before a reveal.
Image-heavy pages are also larger files. Fewer pages keep the preview quick to open.
What to leave in from the front of the book
Keep the title page: it makes the preview feel like a book rather than a document. Keep the contents page for non-fiction. A dedication or epigraph costs one page and adds character. Cut the copyright page, long lists of other titles and several pages of praise. Every page a reader must flip past before reaching your writing is a chance for them to leave.
A quick checklist
- Does the preview start at the real beginning of the book?
- Does it reach your actual writing within three page-turns?
- Does it end at a natural break, on something that makes the reader curious?
- Is every poem, recipe or example in it complete?
- Would you be content if this were all a stranger ever read of your work?
If the answer to each is yes, the length is right, whatever the page count. When you are ready, our step-by-step guide to publishing a preview shows how to choose a page range when you upload.