convenience libraries & binary size

[Pieter Grimmerink]

In an autotools project, I recently moved sourcefiles into convenience 
libraries, because the number of sourcefiles was getting rather large.

Before this reorganisation, the binary size of the resulting (stripped) 
executable was about 800KB.
But after I moved about 50% of the total sourcecode into convenience 
libraries, the stripped executable had grown to a huge 1200KB.

(this application is for an embedded controller, so binary size is a big 
issue)

Is this a normal sideeffect when using convenience libraries?
I tried to strip the libraries before linking them, but that also got rid of 
all symbols that weren't used by the library itself, so that's not an 
option.

Any suggestions or alternatives are very much appreciated.

Best regards,

Pieter