{"id":3862,"date":"2013-09-22T08:00:59","date_gmt":"2013-09-22T07:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=3862"},"modified":"2013-09-22T08:00:59","modified_gmt":"2013-09-22T07:00:59","slug":"does-size-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=3862","title":{"rendered":"Does size matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
I keep track of my word count on an Excel spreadsheet - sorry. It's the geek in me.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Does size matter?<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

Get more than one author in a room and within a couple of minutes someone is going to mention “word count”.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 and worse \u2013 how many do we still have to write.<\/p>\n

Publishers need to know how many words are in a book. When producing a paper book \u2013 the number of words impacts the production cost. How much paper and ink is needed.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 for different reasons, but that’s another blog).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Some books can save you a trip to the gym - just carry them around for an hour or two.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The price for the bestselling house brick \u2013 \u00a39.99 for 896 pages.<\/p>\n

A Pulitzer Prize winner goes for \u00a36.99 for 320 pages. (Although \u2013 to be fair, prices vary from place to place)<\/p>\n

So \u2013 896 pages at 400 words per page = 358,000 words (more or less) Selling for 9.99 is about 358 words per penny (see \u2013 obsessed)\u2026 while 320 pages at 400 words per page\u2026.<\/p>\n

STOP IT!<\/p>\n

When buying e-books, there size of the book is irrelevant. There is a file size and print book page count given online \u2013 but who ever looks at that?<\/p>\n

Prices vary even more wildly for e-books than for paperbacks.<\/p>\n

When reading on my Kindle, I got told how much of the book I have read \u2013 but that really doesn’t give me a feel for the size of the book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I know I'm half way through - but have no idea how much is really left to read.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So what I guess I am saying here is that size doesn’t matter. (Where have I heard that before?)<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 but found it fascinating and thought provoking.<\/p>\n

So \u2013 is it time we stopped being so obsessed with numbers? Maybe \u2013 but not right now \u2013 because I have to go away and write another thousand words to hit my daily word count.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-10i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}