We need much better support for word counts than simply selecting some text or an active story and getting feedback on it through the info panel.

As others suggest, we need support for Books, entire documents, I want to know how many words are in tables, footnotes, how many words are duplicated from master pages, give me a breakdown of words by style/font/colour so that I can use these parameters to easily subtract them from a count.

Pretty much like Illustrator when nothing is selected can give you a breakdown of information document wide, and then specifics when you select objects. This is how the info panel needs to be updated so that if I select a bunch of text frames mixed with an assortment of other items, InDesign is smart enough to decipher and relay information relevant to what it is I have selected be that words, characters, lines, paragraphs through to even number of rows or columns, tables, images etc.. Then give me that as it applies to the whole document when I don't have anything selected.

If a feature like this would be too stressful on system responsiveness/useability then move the requested enhancements in the File info section from the flyout of the Info panel as the info there is pretty pants and could be made so much more informative

Swatches, Styles, Images (embedded versus linked), Pages, White space calculator to infer coverage of a page. The list could go one but you get the picture.

Let make it a bit more useful eh?