Stacking Numbers

We're bombarded with numbers every day, but they really don't mean much.

One way I put numbers in perspective is by turning them into heights.

So far, my family and I have completed 2000 of the 6500 library mailers. It's taken over 80 man hours so far.

2000 envelopes don't seem like much, but it you put them in one big stack, it would reach over 30 feet high. 30 feet of envelopes that had to be stuffed, stamped, labeled, and sealed. And we're not even 1/3 of the way done...

I've written a million words prior to publication. It all resides in a file cabinet. For fun, I stacked it all up---every original story, screenplay, book, (not counting rewrites.) It's over nine feet tall, each page original.

Hyperion printed 22k copies of BLOODY MARY. If stacked, they'd be 1833 feet high, which is 50 feet higher than the Sears Tower.

If you laid my books end to end (Paper and hardback copies of Whiskey, and hardbacks of Bloody) they'd stretch for 11 and a half miles.

When I did that calculation, I got really excited. Then I figured out how many miles the DaVinci Code would stretch---1500. You could drive from New York to Miami with copies of Dan Brown's book lining the highway the entire time.

But I bet Brown doesn't have five full inches of rejection slips...