Words Per Finished Hour (PFH)
A finished hour is one hour of completed, edited audiobook audio. Roughly 9,300 words of manuscript produce one. Per finished hour, usually shortened to PFH, is the unit the audiobook industry prices, schedules and quotes in, and it is why a producer asks for your word count rather than your page count.
Why not page count
A page is not a fixed quantity of words. Trim size, font, leading and margins change it, so the same manuscript can be 240 pages or 310 pages depending only on how it was typeset. Narration time tracks the words, so the industry counts words. If you only know your page count, 250 to 300 words per page is the usual approximation for a trade paperback, but it is an approximation and your word processor already knows the real number.
The conversion, and what moves it
| Manuscript | Approximate finished audio |
|---|---|
| 25,000 words | About 2.7 hours |
| 60,000 words | About 6.5 hours |
| 100,000 words | About 10.75 hours |
| 150,000 words | About 16 hours |
The 9,300 figure reflects an unhurried narration pace of roughly 155 words per minute, which is where most audiobooks sit. Genre moves it. Dense non-fiction with technical terms narrates slower. Dialogue-heavy fiction moves faster. Front and back matter, chapter headings and any pauses written into the performance all add time that the raw word count does not predict, so treat any conversion as a working estimate rather than a contract.
Finished is the operative word
A finished hour is an hour of audio in the delivered file. It is not an hour of studio time. Traditional human production runs somewhere between four and eight hours of recording, editing, proofing and mastering per finished hour, which is the real reason human narration costs what it does. When a rate is quoted PFH, that ratio is already priced in.
Counting your manuscript correctly
Count everything that will be narrated and nothing that will not. A table of contents is normally cut, because chapter markers do the same job better in audio. Headers, footers, page numbers and footnote markers are not narrated. A dedication, an author's note and an afterword usually are. The word count your writing software reports on the whole document is close enough to quote against, but if it includes forty pages of back matter you do not intend to record, it will overstate the length and the price.
Why it matters to what you pay
Because PFH is derived from word count, word count is what determines the price of a production. That is the number to have to hand before asking for a quote, and the number worth checking a quote against.