The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I take my eReader to medical appointments. Once I didn't, thinking "oh I'm the first one in, so I won't be waiting more than 15 minutes," and the doctor was late due to a traffic accident.

Decades ago, my GP said to me "never be on time for a GP appointment" - it has proved to be sage advice

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I take my eReader to medical appointments. Once I didn't, thinking "oh I'm the first one in, so I won't be waiting more than 15 minutes," and the doctor was late due to a traffic accident.

My medical appointments amount to perhaps once a year, twice at most (I hate visiting doctors and fortunately I've been blessed with pretty good physical health - perhaps as a balance, as I emotionally I'm anything but healthy). Not worth the bother of taking an ereader, particularly as none of my current crop fit either in my purse or in my pockets. I can read newspapers on my phone while waiting.

[Quoth]

Almost every ebook (and paper book) seller quoting PAGE count not word count.

Page count only tells you roughly how fat a paper book is. Not how long it is. The best simple guide is word count. We are not still in the 19th Century.

One site even quoted the number of pages in the PDF edition they offer, but what margins, page size, font face and font size does it use?

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Almost every ebook (and paper book) seller quoting PAGE count not word count.

Page count only tells you roughly how fat a paper book is. Not how long it is. The best simple guide is word count. We are not still in the 19th Century.

I'd be happy with page counts. 3 of my 4 Overdrive websites don't even tell you page count. Neither does gutenberg.org, although at least with them you can see file size which is some indication.

The number of times that I've borrowed/downloaded something and been surprised that it's 40 "pages" or 800 "pages"...

[Fbone]

One of my Amazon wishlist books dropped in price 30 cents (3%) today.

Whoopie!

[ownedbycats]

A week back, I was reading a fanfic downloaded with FanFicFare... "wait, why are we repeating this scene?" So I went onto the original fic site to check and the author had changed stuff around, so I had to re-download the entire thing and then re-read it all...

Yesterday I got a notification that the fic was updated. When I went to download it today, I got a "story does not exist." The author deleted the fic.

Is it bad that I find it kind of a relief?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Almost every ebook (and paper book) seller quoting PAGE count not word count.

I don't think most readers have a good grasp on word count. But we've all grown up with paper books and are able to get a general picture of length going by page count. Yes, there's a million variables. But even so.

Page count:
Below 200 - Short novel. Also the average genre novel length prior to the '80's
250-450 - 'Average modern novel length'
500-700 - Prepare to spend some time on this one. Could be a victim of author indulgence
750-> Likely a fantasy door stopper

[Quoth]

What you write about page count might have been true 20 years ago.

It's time to switch to word counts.

Project Gutenberg started in 1972.
ebooks in 1990s on PDAs and later phones.
Sony eInk 2005.

Word counts have easily been available for 40 years due to computerisation.
In the 1930s and earlier writers were paid per word.
In the 1960s when writing in school we were given a target range of number words or a minimum number of words.

I think only people that ONLY ever read paper or born in the early Victorian age grew up with page counts.

One remaining use of page counts is paper print production. It has some effect (or a lot for Amazon) on inner gutter/margin size for binding and if you know paper weight and page size you can calculate spine width and overall cover wrap.

Word counts, not page counts, are used in discussion of essay, short story, novella, novel or epic.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Quoth

What you write about page count might have been true 20 years ago.

It's time to switch to word counts.

Project Gutenberg started in 1972.
ebooks in 1990s on PDAs and later phones.
Sony eInk 2005.

Word counts have easily been available for 40 years due to computerisation.
In the 1930s and earlier writers were paid per word.
In the 1960s when writing in school we were given a target range of number words or a minimum number of words.

I think only people that ONLY ever read paper or born in the early Victorian age grew up with page counts.

One remaining use of page counts is paper print production. It has some effect (or a lot for Amazon) on inner gutter/margin size for binding and if you know paper weight and page size you can calculate spine width and overall cover wrap.

Word counts, not page counts, are used in discussion of essay, short story, novella, novel or epic.

Actually, my daughter just turned 30, reads both ebooks and paper books, and still uses number of pages to estimate the length of a book.

Word counts may be used by people in the publishing industry and ebook nerds, (like us ) but regular people who like to read still talk about number of pages when talking about book length...whether in paper or electronic format.

Shari

[Renate]

Well, word count or page count is fine by me. I've never seen word count except in the context of publisher/author.

Maybe we should standardize on reading time using a standard AI model.
I just read a non-fiction book where you had to consider every sentence individually.
Contrast that with some fluffy book with fast running dialog.

Some page counts I've seen have been padded enormously using formatting that has a "page" per footnote or photo. Also, some books have free excerpts of other books at the end.

Yes, it would be easy to have bots do word count. This is all part of the lack of metadata for books everywhere. Neither Gutenberg or OverDrive has year of original publication. Is that too much to ask?

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I don't think most readers have a good grasp on word count. But we've all grown up with paper books and are able to get a general picture of length going by page count. Yes, there's a million variables. But even so.

Page count:
Below 200 - Short novel. Also the average genre novel length prior to the '80's
250-450 - 'Average modern novel length'
500-700 - Prepare to spend some time on this one. Could be a victim of author indulgence
750-> Likely a fantasy door stopper

I've no idea of how a word count would correlate with my understanding of page counts, and my general expectation of how long a book is. I do know that a page count on many Kindle books isn't a good gauge of the actual length, due to some authors use of padding and or weird formatting to intentionally make a book longer than it actual is.

But in general, a page count is fine with me. It is what I'm used to, and since there seems to be no rush to start listing word counts. I glance at the page count when considering a new author, and tend to pass on books that are less than 200 pages, as I'm not a fan of novellas. I make a note of indie authors who intentionally pad their books, and don't read their offerings.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Renate

Neither Gutenberg or OverDrive has year of original publication. Is that too much to ask?

That's very annoying. Certainly I'd have added that as rant. Worse than lack of word count.

You need Original publication date. But also an edition's original revision release publication, if it was changed. e.g. 1939 and 1950 editions of one of Margery Alingham's Campion short stories are well known to be different, but my 1967 edition has a different selection.

Also publishers may change the title, cover and even the author on the same content (Paul Benyon vs John Wyndham). I've been caught by that with physical books.

Or same title & author of a novel with quite different content. Magician by Raymond Feist, I have both on paper and picked up the "later" version special offer 99p Kindle, but it's been updated three times! Since I do "Download to PC for USB transfer" I have the three revisions. Not checked yet what the difference is. Could be just formatting & typos. I re-read the first one I downloaded. So read original twice on paper (1982 edition, 831 pages, word count unknown, supposedly cut by Editor), once the 1992 edition, supposedly longer "Author's cut" but 681 pages (harder to read smaller font) and once the easiest to read ebook version, supposedly the 2nd version. I could easily run a word count.

I only count from start of heading of start of story to last word or end of The End when doing a word count. Thus excluding front matter, contents, appendix, index, copyright/licence pages and all rear matter. Images don't get counted, but headings, preambles etc do.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

I've no idea of how a word count would correlate with my understanding of page counts, and my general expectation of how long a book is.

Yes, so you were agreeing with me (I think?).

...tend to pass on books that are less than 200 pages, as I'm not a fan of novellas.

That's funny. That used to be median length for crime, mystery, fantasy and sci-fi novels.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

That's funny. That used to be median length for crime, mystery, fantasy and sci-fi novels.

Before I was born, maybe. But I'm not particularly interested in such fossils.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Before I was born, maybe. But I'm not particularly interested in such fossils.

Man, you're writing off Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Silverberg, Michael Moorcock, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Bloch, Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rinehart and just about everything Hard Case Crime republishes