There’s an obvious pattern in the length of the adult Discworld books. After a few shorter ones, they all settle in to a length of about 300 pages, with a few outliers at 360-400. Reading Rob Wilkins official biography, it’s claimed that Terry Pratchett was contracted to deliver books of 100 000 words.
Wilkins further claims that they would closely track word count when writing, and relax when they got past 100 000. “Now we’re writing on our own time”, or words to that effect.
The issue here is that no two sources of word count agree, and moreover none of them say the books are as long as 100 000 words. As an example, L-space.org claims that Feet of Clay is 94 164 words, whereas this archived post gives the number 82940. A huge discrepancy. Incidentally, my hardcover copy of the book runs to 288 pages.

Clearly, someone is making up numbers here. Is it Wilkins, L-space.org or Coach Dave on Reddit? What kind of word count would the publisher and Pratchett have been using to come up with 100 000?

  • armcie@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    I’ve used a plug-in on Calibre to come up with these numbers. It’s described as an estimate, so I have no idea of the accuracy.

    No Title Year Words
    1 The Colour of Magic 1983 66,550
    2 The Light Fantastic 1986 63,610
    3 Equal Rites 1987 66,593
    4 Mort 73,852
    5 Sourcery 1988 79,226
    6 Wyrd Sisters 85,562
    7 Pyramids 1989 87,746
    8 Guards! Guards! 98,207
    9 Eric 1990 35,230
    10 Moving Pictures 96,702
    11 Reaper Man 1991 79,103
    12 Witches Abroad 81,261
    13 Small Gods 1992 90,906
    14 Lords and Ladies 88,636
    15 Men at Arms 1993 93,868
    16 Soul Music 1994 95,094
    17 Interesting Times 93,289
    18 Maskerade 1995 85,290
    19 Feet of Clay 1996 93,936
    20 Hogfather 95,643
    21 Jingo 1997 104,757
    22 The Last Continent 1998 95,074
    23 Carpe Jugulum 98,271
    24 The Fifth Elephant 1999 107,594
    25 The Truth 2000 104,795
    26 Thief of Time 2001 102,571
    27 The Last Hero 39,797
    28 The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents 64,360
    29 Night Watch 2002 113,938
    30 The Wee Free Men 2003 73,224
    31 Monstrous Regiment 115,905
    32 A Hat Full of Sky 2004 79,686
    33 Going Postal 117,708
    34 Thud! 2005 111,122
    35 Wintersmith 2006 89,107
    36 Making Money 2007 113,248
    37 Unseen Academicals 2009 135,531
    38 I Shall Wear Midnight 2010 109,805
    39 Snuff 2011 131,465
    40 Raising Steam 2013 126,798
    41 The Shepherd’s Crown 2015 83,579

    I don’t know where Coach Dave got their numbers from, but given that each ends in either 5 or 0, I suspect it’s an estimate of some sort.