rdearman wrote:I never suggested counting words. I simply pointed out the actual word count of real books, in order to illustrate the fact that what the SC definition of a book doesn't match the standard size of mass market paperback books.
I don't think anyone ever said that you had suggested words. I know I personally quoted Whodathunkitz' post. That said, I think that people are going to have to just accept the fact that books can be of vastly different lengths and still be books. Never mind too things like differing font size, paper size, gusset, etc (which was already brought up) which all affect how much space the same set of words will take up on a page. I mean even if someone were to say, "ok the number of pages in the Bible is equivalent to one book" the next logical set of questions could include, which bible, what translation(s), and what size (I have two copies of the JPS Tanakh and they are two very different sizes). The same is true of different publications of any book, including things like book club editions, hardcover vs paperback, and a book in the same language being published for two different geographical markets.
For what it's worth when I read your
post that asked the question "What is the definition of a book?" One of my first thoughts was, "well let's compare this to journal articles - just because Journal A has a word limit for articles as 8,000 and Journal B has a limit of 10,000 words doesn't mean that a 9,000 word article isn't an article even though it wouldn't be published in Journal A due to it being too long".
All that is to say, things are not black and white. A book's length is not its defining factor. This sucks when wanting to create something that categorize something as being or not being a book when your defining characteristic is pages (or words for that matter). Honestly it makes the most sense to me to just stick with an arbitrary page length because that is just as arbitrary as the length of a book.
