Does size matter?
Writers are a bit obsessed by numbers. I’m not talking about sales figures for our books (although we can get pretty obsessive about those too).
Get more than one author in a room and within a couple of minutes someone is going to mention “word count”.
Word counts haunt our dreams and our nightmares. How many words can we write in a day? How many words of the work in progress have we written – and worse – how many do we still have to write.
Publishers need to know how many words are in a book. When producing a paper book – the number of words impacts the production cost. How much paper and ink is needed.
When buying a paper book, we can see at a glance that Stephen King writes books the size of house bricks. But does that make Under the Dome a better book than To Kill A Mockingbird (I loved them both – for different reasons, but that’s another blog).
The price for the bestselling house brick – £9.99 for 896 pages.
A Pulitzer Prize winner goes for £6.99 for 320 pages. (Although – to be fair, prices vary from place to place)
So – 896 pages at 400 words per page = 358,000 words (more or less) Selling for 9.99 is about 358 words per penny (see – obsessed)… while 320 pages at 400 words per page….
STOP IT!
When buying e-books, there size of the book is irrelevant. There is a file size and print book page count given online – but who ever looks at that?
Prices vary even more wildly for e-books than for paperbacks.
When reading on my Kindle, I got told how much of the book I have read – but that really doesn’t give me a feel for the size of the book.
So what I guess I am saying here is that size doesn’t matter. (Where have I heard that before?)
Enjoyment matters. I have re and re-read To Kill A Mockingbird. It doesn’t take long, but I get a little more from it each time. I took a long time to read Under the Dome – but found it fascinating and thought provoking.
So – is it time we stopped being so obsessed with numbers? Maybe – but not right now – because I have to go away and write another thousand words to hit my daily word count.
Comments
12 responses to “Does size matter?”
But, isn’t it a magic feeling as chapter by chapter the numbers build until like a tired old race horse the finishing post looms!
Hi Anita,
It is great to watch those numbers grow. Sometimes the finish post seems a long way away – but passing it – even if at a canter rather than a gallop – is always a great feeling.
And I thought you were contemplating erotica, Janet …
I, too, love To Kill a Mockingbird, and amazingly, I thought the Gregory Peck film excellent. Usually, films let down the book, but in this case, although the book was inevitably better, the film caught its spirit.
I don’t know Under the Dome. I must read it.
Liz X
I knew the title would get YOU Liz 🙂
I agree with you that the film of To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the best book to film adaptations ever – and I was so totally in Love with Gregory Peck!!
Under The Dome is a bit of a diversion for Stephen King – not really horror. It really is a fascinating look at people and their behaviour in trying circumstances. I wasn’t overly taken with the ending – how he tried to explain the Dome itself – but the first 95 per cent of the book was brilliant. It’s been adapted for TV, but I missed to first few episodes so have not been watching it.
Very clever title for an interesting post. My mind was in the same gutter as Liz I’m ashamed to say 🙂
LOL Angela – I confess – the title was a shameless attempt at self promotion. And I am glad you enjoyed the post.
We do indeed obsess about size Janet. I think the best thing about the e-book revolution is that novellas are storming back and here to stay. Sometimes 50,000 or even 30,000 is just right for a story and it was difficult before e-books to find a market for that length. Sometimes longer is right. I do feel sometimes nowadays novels (and films) are just tooooooooo long and would have benefitted from a little judicious pruning. Right, I’m up to 63,000 words, must go……..
Hi Cara,
I am also pleased by the novella come back. There are times I just want a short read – but it still has to be satisfying and as you say, some stories work with the shorter length.
I’ve just finished writing a shorter book – just under 60,000 words – and I really love it. Fingers crossed by publisher does too.
It just shows how certain phrases stick in our memories? And sometimes a short story begs to be developed into a novella or even a novel. I’m about to write contributions to various blogs so word count will be important. Thanks, Janet, for an interesting post.
Hi Sandra – as a big fan of short stories (writing them and reading them) I agree totally. Sometimes a story does beg for a little more space.
When I was the editor of a TV news programme – my reporters used to ask me how long a story for the programme should be. I would say as long as it needs to be – then chop off about five per cent to make the writing tighter and better. I think that pretty much works for fiction too.
Yes, okay, your title caught my interest too! But so did the content – you’re right, I too am obsessed with word count. On a good day I can feel smug having seen that word count charge up by a few thousand – but the next day I’ll probably cut most of them out because they were rubbish! Writing a few hundred gems is what I should be aiming for…
Hi Kathryn – Nora Roberts is famously quoted as saying – you can edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page (or something along those lines). She’s right. And I also think that the bad words we write have a purpose. Seeing something that doesn’t work helps us recognise what does work – even if it is simply a smutty-sounding blog title 🙂