Re: Fooled again! eBooks and truth in labelling

For what it's worth, this problem is not solely limited to eBooks.

Plain old ordinary print publishers are very creative in the way they  
vary type size, line spacing, and margins. I don't have a micrometer  
but I'm almost convinced that they vary paper thickness, too. The  
result is that a row of shiny mass-market paperbacks sitting in a  
drugstore or airport book rack can look at least roughly the same in  
heft and thickness, but vary by a factor of _at least_ four in actual  
content.

I was personally fooled--and scandalized--by a book by Stephen King,  
"The Colorado Kid," which had the appearance of a paperback novel. I  
went to the trouble of estimating word count and came up with a rough  
total of 40,000, barely a novella. In contrast, King's "Different  
Seasons" packs a word total of just about four times as much into a  
roughly similar-looking package.

And, of course, some of the paperbacks that look thick also have  
smallish type.

300,000-word paperbacks are not unusual.

Compact discs--after people hollered bloody murder in the early days-- 
now uniformly give their playing time in minutes and seconds on their  
covers. Books, print AND electronic, ought to state their word count.


------------------------------------------------------
Post a message:   ebook-community [[at]] *
Unsubscribe:      ebook-community-unsubscribe [[at]] *
Switch to digest: ebook-community-digest [[at]] *
Switch to normal: ebook-community-normal [[at]] *
Put mail on hold: ebook-community-nomail [[at]] *
Administrator:    ebook-community-owner [[at]] *

(* == yahoogroups.com)
------------------------------------------------------- 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    mailto:[email protected] 
    mailto:ebook-community-fullfeatured-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ebook-community-unsubscribe-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/