I am starting to feel sorry for all those that seem to find these "padded" books. I have been reading for a long time and I could count on one hand the books I thought had what might be considered padding. I just don't see those in trade published books and the books I read are regular sized average of 300-450 pages. Word count means squat to me and it doesn't matter what the type font size and all that is, I know how long it takes me to read a book and its pretty spot on each time.
Maybe its genre, I don't read Fantasy. But like I said, in the genre I love, romance, self published books do tend to run shorter than regular sized books. And I find that often the story suffers for it. That is just my personal experience in the genres I read. Fully fleshed characters are not padding. Vivid worlds are not padding. Great stories with layers are not padding.
I'll just consider myself lucky then to read the genres I do and not have to worry about this elusive thing called padding.
