ten rules of publishing
From Jeffrey L. Smith’s Amazon review of Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing.
What we have here is an 85-page hardback book that has the contents of a 4-page article from the New York Times. How is this possible? You can use cardstock instead of paper, to make the book 3/4” thick. Then you put one paragraph on a page. And on other pages, you put one sentence. Make 85% of the book white space, and make the book pretty small. Add some pen and ink drawings on some pages. Pretty soon, this hardback book is starting to look like a hardback book. You can’t bend the pages (remember that they are made of cardstock). How long does it take to read this hardback book? A little bit longer than reading an essay in the NY Times. The pages are easier to turn in the NY Times.
It is interesting that the Tag Suggestions provided by Amazon.com include the terms “ripoff” and “rip off”. I’ll choose “rip off” as it takes up more space and will make this review seem much more like the length of a hardback book.