Welcome to the page of book statistics from Humor That Works: 501 Ways to Use Humor to Beat Stress, Increase Productivity, and Have Fun at Work.

If you already have the book (and saw #284), keep on reading. If you haven't picked up the book yet, why not head to Amazon and order it today?

General

A few stats about the general make-up of the book.

• Number of pages (print): 292
• Filesize (print): 55.1 MB
• Dimensions (inches): 6 x 6 x 0.7
• Weight (ounces): 12.5
• Number of "locations" (Kindle): 6248
• Filesize (Kindle): 1,276 KB

References

Statistics on the references used within the book.

• Number of sources: 79 (see all of the sources)
• Number of links to websites: 65 (see all of the links)
• Number of languages used/referenced: 17
  (Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Dothraki, Emoticon, English, German, Klingon, Korean, Leetspeak, Maltese, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Turkish, Wolof)
• Number of references to: cake (7), humor (292), math (4), milkshake (5), orange (6), zombie (12)

The Content

A breakdown of all of the words in the book.

• Total number of words: 31,321
• Total number of unique words: 7,275
• First word alphabetically: a
• Last word alphabetically: Zuckerberg
• First word chronologically: Humor
• Last word chronologically: 431
• Most frequently used word: the
  (used 1,434 times or 4.6% of the total words)
• Most frequently used "real" word: you
  (used 708 times or 2.3% of the total words)
• Number of words used 11 or more times: 450
  (6.2% of unique words, 74.7% of the total words)
• Number of words used only once: 3,652
  (50.2% of unique words, 11.6% of total words)

Writing Process

A little bit of insight into the amount of time spent working on the book.

• Total number of hours spent on book (gross approximation)*: 699
  (87.3 workdays or 4.3 workmonths**)
• Number of hours spent brainstorming (approximate): 90 (11.3 workdays)
• Number of hours spent writing ways (approximate): 160 (20 workdays)
• Number of hours spent on first draft (approximate): 176 (22 workdays)
• Number of hours spent on second draft: 151 (18.9 days)
• Number of hours spent on third draft: 55 (6.9 days)
• Number of hours spent on subsequent revisions: 53 (6.6 days)
• Number of hours spent on conversion to Kindle: 14 (1.8 days)
• Number of versions (print): 9
• Number of versions (Kindle): 6
• Number of ways that didn’t make the cut to get into the book: 178
• Number of edits per editor: Pat (R1: 38, R2: 237), David (92), Mom (36)

*I started tracking my time more diligently after the first draft. This does not include time spent doing research or promotion.
**Assuming 8 hour workdays, 20 day workmonths.

Project Schedule

The approximate project schedule for the book (this is what happened, not what was planned).

• September 24, 2009 -- Publish 101 Ways to Create Humor at Work article (Pre-cursor to the book).
• January 1, 2010 -- Initial idea to write 501 ways book.
• December 20, 2010 to December 22, 2012 -- First round of brainstorming.
• June 4, 2011 to June 23, 2011 -- Second round of brainstorming.
• January 4, 2012 to February 16, 2012 -- Third round of brainstorming.
• February 18, 2012 to April 14, 2012 -- First round of writing.
• April 20, 2012 to April 28, 2012 -- Research for book design.
• April 29, 2012 to September 8, 2012 -- First draft of book.
• September 9, 2012 to September 17, 2012 -- First draft of cover.
• September 10, 2012 to October 22, 2012 -- Second draft of book.
• October 16, 2012 to October 23, 2012 -- Second draft of cover.
• October 23, 2012 to November 1, 2012 -- Third draft of book.
• November 1, 2012 to November 11, 2012 -- Fourth to ninth drafts of book.
• November 7, 2012 to November 12, 2012 -- First to sixth drafts of Kindle version.
• November 12, 2012 -- Final version to CreateSpace / Kindle Direct.
• November 14, 2012 -- Book launch.