Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
What you write about page count might have been true 20 years ago.
It's time to switch to word counts.
Project Gutenberg started in 1972.
ebooks in 1990s on PDAs and later phones.
Sony eInk 2005.
Word counts have easily been available for 40 years due to computerisation.
In the 1930s and earlier writers were paid per word.
In the 1960s when writing in school we were given a target range of number words or a minimum number of words.
I think only people that ONLY ever read paper or born in the early Victorian age grew up with page counts.
One remaining use of page counts is paper print production. It has some effect (or a lot for Amazon) on inner gutter/margin size for binding and if you know paper weight and page size you can calculate spine width and overall cover wrap.
Word counts, not page counts, are used in discussion of essay, short story, novella, novel or epic.
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Actually, my daughter just turned 30, reads both ebooks and paper books, and still uses number of pages to estimate the length of a book.
Word counts may be used by people in the publishing industry and ebook nerds, (like us
) but regular people who like to read still talk about number of pages when talking about book length...whether in paper or electronic format.
Shari