Half Way!

Brian Sanderson Blog entry Posted on 08.22.08



I crossed the 50% mark on A MEMORY OF LIGHT last night. I still worry that this book will go longer than 400k, which means this wouldn't actually be halfway. However, it's 200k words, which is a nice milestone.

I know that a lot of people don't know how to judge wordcounts. When I use wordcounts to say how long a book is, readers will often say "So...how many pages is that?" I'm never sure how to respond to this, because page counts can be rather variable. Typesetters can work some real magic with font and layout to make a page count come out the way they want, which is why a lot of industry professionals end up using wordcount instead. (Of course there are also a variety of ways of arriving at Wordcount, depending on how you count...)

Anyway, I figured that I would come up with a list of books by myself and Mr. Jordan, give their wordcounts, then periodically place where this book fits into the list by comparison. Maybe that will help place where this book fits in so far.

AMOL Relative Length Chart: 8/22/08

Alcatraz/Evil Librarians 60,400
New Spring 121,815
---A MEMORY OF LIGHT 200k So Far!---
Elantris 202,765
The Final Empire 214,752
The Path of Daggers 226,687
Warbreaker 236,301
Winter's Heart 238,789
Hero of Ages 244,201
The Dragon Reborn 251,392
The Well of Ascension 252,739
The Great Hunt 267,078
Crossroads of Twilight 271,632
A Crown of Swords 295,028
The Eye of the World 305,902
Knife of Dreams 315,163
The Fires of Heaven 354,109
Lord of Chaos 389,264
The Shadow Rising 393,823