As big as the Empire State Building
Having been on sale for just under a year and a half, I recently got the second sales report for my book and it’s done better than I hoped. Sure it’s not a seller in the region of JK Rowling or anything, but the sales figures are pretty respectable for a book of this nature, and people are still buying which is a good sign. However, I did wonder just how big the sales were in a physical sense.
- Would it fill up a bus?
- A double decker?
- Would it fill up the space in my office?
- What about my whole house?
I tried working out the volumes but couldn’t believe the figure that was staring back at me, so I gave up on calculating volumes and assumed I’d made a mistake; instead I went for the old ‘how big would it stretch if … " routine. What I discovered was:
- If I were to stack each and every copy of the book that was sold up until June of this year, one on top of each other, it would reach a height of 393 metres.
So, naturally I then went searching for something that was about that height and discovered that my tower of books would be just 20 metres taller than the Empire State Building (actually the Empire State’s top floor tower – there’s another 230 feet from the top floor to the top of the lightning rod).
Now I just need to go to New York to see for myself what that really means. And as for that JK Rowling, I think hers would basically equal the volume of all of downtown Manhattan!
Posted: September 27th, 2007 under Sitepoint Book, Writing.
Comments
Comment from Richard Byarugaba
Time October 1, 2007 at 4:22 am
Hi Ian?
Hope u r doing great. Especially if your book is selling that much, i mean a heap as tall as the Empire State Building. You must be planning to retire young. Lucky you!
Actually i liked your book and i have read it to the end.
But it looks like web development is changing so fast and iam worried that after spending alot of time studying html, i will have to study other webdevelopment programs like javascript, dreamweaver or asp if iam to build beautiful and static websites. Checking the source code for powerful websites, i realise they are all using more advanced software.
what do you think of my observation??
Comment from Lloydi
Time October 1, 2007 at 5:01 am
@Richard: yes, web development techniques are changing but in almost all cases they still require a strong foundation – and that’s what the book should have provided. Learning JavaScript, advanced CSS, AJAX – all of that requires that you’ve learnt those basics, so I don’t think it’s a problem for a while yet.
As for retiring early, I don’t think so – tech writers don’t do this for the money (and if they do, they need to be pumping out many successful books a year!).
Comment from Alex Walker
Time October 10, 2007 at 6:10 pm
@Richard, it doesn’t matter if you’re a black belt in JavaScript or a world authority on Ruby, ASP.NET or PHP. It all ultimately hangs on HTML.
Comment from dN
Time October 11, 2007 at 5:43 am
As someone who has bought, read and recommended your book, I’d like to say thank you.
As already mentioned, the book gave me an excellent grounding the web design basics. I have since went on to work full time on website development.
Any chance of you doing more book? Perhaps on accessibility or other ‘advanced’ topics?
Actually, as someone who works full time on a corporate website, much like yourself, I’d love to see a book on this type of role. Your personal insights, etc.
Comment from Simon Willison
Time September 27, 2007 at 10:08 am
Impressive! If you do get to Manhattan the best place to see the Empire State Building is from the “Top of the Rock” at the Rockefeller center (don’t bother going up the Empire State Building itself, because you won’t be able to see it!). Nat and I took this photo there: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nataliedowne/1218376931/