384 pages · 91,000 words · 6×9 paperback · Interior: 80 hours · Cover: 6 hours · Print-on-demand
A straightforward thriller in terms of content — no complex structure — but the text was set ragged right rather than justified, at the author’s insistence. Ragged right, done well, can take more than twice as long as justified setting. Every line break is a judgment call; the goal is lines that end naturally without drawing attention to the rag. Here it works: the slight unease of an uneven right margin suits the material without announcing itself.
The author also had strong opinions about orphans — specifically, the first line of a paragraph stranded at the bottom of a page. If one couldn’t be eliminated typographically, he rewrote the preceding paragraph to remove it. That level of engagement slows things down but did improve the result.