« My book cover: Orange is the New Orange | Home | Two for two for Twelve on the NYT bestseller list »
Did you change the margins on your term paper too?
By Jennifer 8. Lee | June 14, 2007
I was contracted at 90,000 words, and it looked like I was heading to 110,000. Journalists are obsessed with length/word count (Book editors tell me that their journalist authors will always know exactly how many words they have written so far. Was true for me!) It seemed to me 20% overage was severe, so the 24 hours before my book was due, I spent several hours trying to squeeze the manuscript down to like a decent 100,000. Jon asked me what was taking so long. When I explained, he wrote back: “Hi Jenny: Please DO NOT WORRY about the length! We have designers who can adjust margins, fonts, and lines space to give us the length we desire. Perhaps you did something similar in high school when you had to turn in a term paper. Attach file. Hit send button. Finish chapter. xo, J.”
Of course, this may answer why Amazon knows my book is 320 pages.
Topics: Book Musings | No Comments »