Review: timely release for fans... should Amazon post word counts?
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 31, 2012
Saw this today, just released, and just in time for Halloween!  This is part of an ongoing series of novels, novellas, and shorts that follow the 'life' of vampire detective Samantha Moon, a character I love.This is a short story.  I'm a fan of the series, so I always download and read everything Samantha Moon.  It's a given for me.  Most of Rain's work is reasonably priced, so I won't complain about paying $1.99 for this, especially since his full length titles are so reasonably priced.  He even offers downloads for free from time to time.I understand not everyone would feel that way, and that $1.99 may be too much for some to pay for a quick read.  The author is clear on this being a short story, but Amazon doesn't share details that would tell us in advance exactly how short or long an eBook is before we buy, taking away the option of weighing length against price.Amazon shares the file size with us...??? (I guess to make sure you have enough space on your Kindle?  Or in case you're charged/limited on data downloads?)  But I doubt the average reader could look at file size and have any clue how that translates into length of read.Why doesn't Amazon post word counts and page length for all eBooks in the description?  I can find out a movie's run time before I buy my ticket.  I could thumb through a physical book on a shelf, or view its page length here on Amazon... but when it comes to eBooks us Kindle readers are left to make blind purchases.Word count is a truer representation than page length since fonts and spacing can affect the number of pages, so Amazon should share both of these stats with us.  Customers unfamiliar with thinking in terms of word count can compare word counts of potential books with those of eBooks they already own to get a clear idea of what they're buying.This could prevent negative reviews that are solely the result of a purchaser being disappointed in the length of a download after purchase.  I'm seeing these more and more, and feel bad for authors that get these.  They pull down the rating and at first glance other Amazon customers will think, as I often do, that the lack of stars is because the story is bad.  If it were me, I'd rather lose a sale than have a customer give me such a review because they feel cheated, downgrading my story even though they absolutely loved it because they would have never bought it if they knew how short it was.