New Valens Legacy book, now live

The new Valens Legacy book: Stand On It is now available on Amazon:


Stand On It

A Few Words on Page Count

A few words on 'page count'.

Page count, the number of pages in a paperback book, is not really much of an indication of just how many words are in a novel. For example, I have one series where I formatted the books at 6x9 and another done at 5x8. Mass-market paperbacks are at I think 4x7.

The difference in the amount of words you can put on a page between just 6x9 and 5x8 is fairly significant, and that doesn't even begin to take into account the size of the gutter (space between the text and the spine) the outside margin and the top and bottom margins. Then, on top of that you have font size and font style. I have seen mass-market paperbacks where the publisher used an 18-point font in order to increase page count, to make a novella look like a novel, or a short novel look like a longer one.

Now for POD (Print on Demand) books, page count is the primary factor in determining the price of your product. So if you want to be competitive with mass-market paperbacks, you need to get the number of pages in your book down. It's as simple as that. So you go for the 6x9 format, you shrink your gutter and your margins, you go with a smaller font size and say a font like Georgia instead of Times New Roman. To make my novel 'Children of Steel' saleable, I had to shrink the font down to a ten-point and squash the margins as much as possible. The book is still very fat in the 6x9 format even after doing all of that, but it let me sell it at 10.99 and still make a quarter (as in 25 cents) on each print sale.

On some of my more recent stories I did similar stuff to keep the page count low. Sure, I could easily push all of them over two hundred, or even three hundred pages, but then I start pricing myself out of competition. People forget that it's how many words are in a book, not how many pages. Words per page can easily vary from two hundred to four hundred fifty, or more.

It's all in the formatting.

What I'm reading

I just started reading 'Lion's Quest: Undefeated' by Michael-Scott Earle. Wow, this is an amazing book. I'm about 2/3rds through it. If you haven't read it, I'd say to give it a look.

Lion's Quest: Undefeated

I honestly don't get to read enough, too busy working. There's a bunch of books I need to finish, along with book 2 in 'Super Sales on Super Heroes' which so far has also been a lot of fun. There really are a lot of good books out there these days.

The new book has been uploaded and should be available later tonight

Okay, I put the book up with Amazon about an hour and a half ago. The status is publishing, which means I have a possible link for it, BUT until it's actually published, that link won't do anything.

So, here's the link, right now it'll tell you that it can't be found, but hopefully in a few hours that'll change. It'll definitely be live by tomorrow.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078RGJ2PY


Again, right now you just get a 'Sorry' page.

Here's the cover, it came out a little more 'fan servicey' than I intended, but unless I hear lots of complaints, I'm gonna stick with it. In my defense I had the flu when I ordered it, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it! :-)