So a friend of mine sent me a story today that I just had to share...
An editor put a post on her blog titled "How not to boost your word count." Apparently she was considering a manuscript for publication in one of her house's category romance lines. For the particular line this author was looking to be published in, the mandatory word count was 60-90K. The author pitched the manuscript as 67K, and when the editor checked the count on her computer she found that it was indeed 66,749. However looking it over it seemed a bit short. It wasn't until she loaded it to her e-reader that she discovered the trick. The author filled the empty page space between chapters with paragraphs of sort nonsensical words, then changed the text color to white, so you couldn't see them! The editor's e-reader was set to sepia, which made the while text stand out against the beige background. Once all the extra text was deleted, the word count only came to 52K! Talk about padding!
I'm not sure if this author is an idiot or a genius, but either way, I about died laughing!
