What is the approximate word count of a typical sourcebook?

[Aotrs Commander]

Just out of what, I suppose constitutes "professional" interest and idle curioisity, what is a ball-park sort of figure for the word count of a typical BattleTech sourcebook? (Say, a faction book as opposed to a TRO). I was promopted to ask when was just looking at the quarter-million word-count I've written on my own lore stuff and wondered about it.

(This seemed to be a more logical place to ask than on the geneal forum.)

I think novels usually are mesured at something around 100k words (give or take depending, obviously), but I have no clue as to what sort of size a sourcebook is by comparison.

[Kit deSummersville]

I checked my records and the last two word count assignments I saw for sourcebooks were around 120k and 160k, so in that ballpark.

[Adrian Gideon]

No such thing as typical. Pick a particular sourcebook series and I could give you a rough idea for that line.

[Aotrs Commander]

I checked my records and the last two word count assignments I saw for sourcebooks were around 120k and 160k, so in that ballpark.

Right. Thanks.

I'm not sure how I feel about that, then, really, given that by the time I'm "done," (in the sense of having finished all the write-ups I intend to) I'll have probably written 2-3 sourcebook's worth of text.

No such thing as typical. Pick a particular sourcebook series and I could give you a rough idea for that line.

For the sake of arguement, though Kit deSummersville has given me a reasonable ballpark; say, faction handbook, then? (Which is probably closest to the blurb I'm doing.)

[Adrian Gideon]

Like the ones FanPro put out? Like Handbook: House Steiner?

[Aotrs Commander]

Or the major periphery powers (that being the most recent one I've read).

(I was thinking of the field manuals, which I have some of, but Sarna tells me that they are turn-of-the-millenium, but apparently the same page count as the earlier 1980s house handbooks.)

Heck, let's just say something of about that page-count (circa 160, for the field manals, or at least the Capellan ones since those were the ones I looked at on Sarna!), I'm only idly interested!

I was about say, never mind, a technical readout, but then realised they are a bit variable in length themselves, never mind about period! (I'm pretty sure my original 3025 has a higher word-count than my original 3050, just because the old one had more blurb per mech, for instance...!)