Twilight: The Blank Pages

I've actually managed to get some editing done. Nothing motivates like a looming deadline when you realize you really ought to be publishing a book at least once a year. Perhaps my largest procrastinating tool is this blog, I'll write posts rather than edit or write a manuscript (or struggle with the awkward settings for pictures...as evidenced by the strange white squares at the start of this one. Trust me, the more I fiddle with it, the worse it gets, so let's just use this as a reminder of how I have no idea what I'm doing.)

The weather has been pretty dreary here in Idaho. When it's not just looking cloudy, it's so windy that I swear it's trying to tear the roof off various structures on our property (succeeded in one case, too) So everything is becoming green and alive as Spring arrives.

Naturally, I figured I would dedicate this month to Twilight.

Love it or hate it, you have to admit that it's changed the world of writing forever.

Now, you've likely noticed the occasional jab I've made at Twilight's expense, but over this next month you'll get to truly see my relationship with the series and how it's evolved over the years and come to settle down into how I will always probably think of it.
It started with my absolute hatred of it. At the time of the series' popularity, I was a minority. These days it's actually more popular to hate it than love it, and it appears that Team Sweden can't stand the anti-fans as much as the fans. Perhaps even more. So, because of this, I had to come up with a more in-depth reason. It's easy to love something, and it's even easier to hate something, but it's hard to really break down some of the details of why and, to be honest, there are reasons that I both love and hate it these days.

For today, we get to have some fun at Twilight's expense, with math!

This was originally written by me in 2009, so of course the numbers have changed, but it's still interesting to see.

In the second Twilight book, New Moon, there is a point where Edward leaves Bella. Bella becomes so devastated that she literally becomes a brain-dead zombie ("There's a change?" you ask yourself), this is represented by four blank pages.

I admit, it did manage to make me go "Whoa" at the time, though nothing else managed to give me that feeling in the series, but the effect was quickly lost and it wasn't long before I realized how stupit it was. It was a waste of good paper.

So I decided to figure out how much of a waste it really is.

There are 4 blank pages in New Moon. I did some research and figured out that over 24 million copies of New Moon were sold as of the end of 2009 (This doesn't include the gobs of them that haven't sold). Take the 4 blank pages and multiply them by the number of copies of New Moon.

4 x 25,000,000 = 100,000,000

We now have 100 million blank pages.

But I'm not finished yet. Let's put those pages to good use.

The US standard edition versions of the Harry Potter series (Books 1-7) equal a total of 4,165 pages. Let's find out how many copies of the entire Harry Potter series we can make using the blank pages of New Moon alone. Take 100 million and divide by 4,175. If it comes up as a fraction, round down to the whole number because we don't want a partial set of the Harry Potter series.

100,000,000 / 4,175 = 23,952

We now have 23,952 copies of the entire Harry Potter series, the adventures of Harry, Ron, Hermione, and many others, made from all the blank pages of New Moon alone.

Happy reading everyone!