I'm sure one of the selling points of an e-book is its weight. You almost don't care how many pages the book has as long as you can hold only one page at a time.
This brings us to tonight's topic: weighty books, literally weighty.
My wife went to the library today to pick up the latest Jean Auel book about our pre-historic ancestors. She had reserved it anticipating a reasonable wait for her turn. Turns out there was no wait but plenty of weight. She took one look at the 750 pages and said, no thanks.
It's not just how long it takes to wade through all those pages, but holding a 750-pager can be exhausting.
When I was commuting to New York by bus I always had a hard-cover book with me. But I had standards. I had to be able to hold it comfortably and it had to fit into my briefcase without adding undue weight. I called them “bus books” and they rarely exceeded 300 pages.
Even then I usually fell asleep just before we entered the Lincoln Tunnel. It was a short but refreshing nap but it set me up for the rest of the day and then I looked forward to resuming the story on the way home.
If you've read any of those writerly essays stressing the importance of keeping your work succinct and to the point you have to wonder about authors who pile it on and the publishers who accept their work.
Do authors still get paid by the word? My word!
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