Math wizards: I need a formula for calculating number of pages in a scrapbook album?

Question

Ok, I am a scrapbooker. I make albums using the double page layout style. This means pages facing each other are one layout, theme, picture event (ie birthday, camping, vacation, etc.). Not counting the first page in the book or the last page, how can I figure out how many individual pages I will need if I know that I will have X number of events in my album. One more detail. pages are used back to back. this means that if I have two double page layouts I only need 3 actual pages because the middle page front and back acts as one-half of each layout. Thanks for not making me reach far back in my brain and dig out the algebra! :)

Answer 1

Well, you want 2x faces (since you need two faces per event). And each page yields 2 faces (front and back), so you need at least X sheets of paper. But you don't use the front of the first or the back of the last, so you need to add 1, thus you need X+1 sheets of paper for X themes.

Answer 2

Well, let's talk this through: If you have one event, you need two pages. If you have two events, you need three. 3 events will need 4, and so on. Therefore, the number of pages required is essentially the number of events minus 1. Or:
P = E - 1, where P = pages, and E = events. If you are binding them in a book fashion, that is using several sheets stapled or bound together at a spine, and you need to calculate how many sheets of this paper are required, take the number of pages, P, and divide by 4. Because a sheet of paper when folded will yield 4 pages of space to put art on. If the number is not evenly divisible by 4, round up and you'll end up with one blank page. Good luck!

Answer 3

That depends on the font size and style. Books are formatted by editors to adhere to publishers policies concerning appearance and marketing, so the criteria is different than when you're doing the actual writing in Word. I don't think you can draw a fair comparison, but my experience is that you can fit an awful lot on a single Word page. Why not pick a book that you consider about what you'd like yours to be in size, and type out a page of it on Word. That should give you some idea of how many Word pages you need. But don't forget that you'll be rewriting and editing! If you already have a publisher, they probably have guidelines to help you with this.