+30 Word count is by definition, the most accurate measurement for book length, but everyone only cares about the number of pages, amirite?

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Well one piece of information is readily available while the other is not.

by Amy66 4 weeks ago

A 100 page book vs 1000 page book is very easy to visualize. A book with 4272920 words vs 83920203 is not. The numbers are just too big to grasp easily

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

That and the font size…

by Sad_Version 4 weeks ago

Spacing too If people write like this You'd use a lot more pages Correct?

by QuestionMedical6681 4 weeks ago

You are right but i think thats OPs point. Using pages doesnt still you the length because spacing and font.

by valentine73 4 weeks ago

You could classify books by word count i.e. 100-499 words 500-999 words 1000-1999 words 2000-5000 words Or you could just round it to the nearest 'nice' number

by Big_Novel_909 4 weeks ago

Your wild word count examples prove your argument!

by Pete08 4 weeks ago

Maybe in scientific notation it would be easier? 4.3e+6 Vs 8.4e+7 Well I don't know either but that's because I judge by pages too.

by No-Cicada3691 4 weeks ago

Scientific notation doesn't fix the fact that it is much harder to visualize number of words than number of pages.

by rathlori 4 weeks ago

easy to visualise a few hundred vs a few million

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

its easier to visualise 200 over 100,000 because you can actually count to 200 in a reasonable amount of time (theres probably other reasons but thats the easiest way to explain for my brain)

by Novel_Secret3051 4 weeks ago

It's easier to visualize the size of a page than just a word

by rathlori 4 weeks ago

Oh, I judge by cover

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

I like the usage of "kilowords" and "megawords?

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

I don't know, do you?

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

That reason it's easy is because we are used to it. If we were used to counting the words we would immediately understand that a book with 60-70k words is a short book and 100-130k is medium and 200k+ is very long. So it would still be a very simple system but just more accurate. Btw your examples are roughly 17 000 pages and 335 000 pages. You just added several extra digits to make it look worse, no book is that long.

by luisa09 4 weeks ago

I read a lot fanfiction and they are not by pages, but words, So i have the opposite issue, I don't know how long 200 pages is but i sure know how long 60k words is. It's what annoys me with published books, page counts means very little to me.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Few, if any, books are exceeding 4 million words, let alone 83 million!

by kozeymyrna 4 weeks ago

That's a good point! Also, while I'm sure this isn't always true, I've found books and other writing to be typeset to make the number of pages a more relevant metric. The margins, typeface, font size, columns (e.g. for articles) can help with reading pace, so the number of pages can be more consistently used as a metric for the length of the piece.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

"Word" in word count generally doesn't mean literally a word, it's usually either 5 or 6 characters (depending if you count the space accounts for the discrepancy, because I've always been taught 5 letters). So "long" is 4/5 of a word and polysyllabic is 2 2/5 words.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Where is this used? I'm unfamiliar with not literally counting the words.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

What about something like a cognitive load score. 10 thousand words of science textbooks vs 10 thousand words of Harry Potter are two very different things. Or perhaps we just do character account 🤷‍♂️

by Austen87 4 weeks ago

this is true. and even the same book can be harder or easier to read depending on the formatting.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

actually a letter count is the most accurate

by Adventurous-Bat 4 weeks ago

I hate long words. They trigger my hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Ah!

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

As an audio book enjoyer, I've started referencing by book lengths in time.

by Shawnchamplin 4 weeks ago

Me too. Imo 12-14h is good for a book series and 20-25h for a stand alone book. My favorite series is the legend of the ice people. Each book is 7h long 250pages and the series is 47 books long with another 40ish books in the same universe but haven't read those yet. Highly recommend it if you like fantasy but in a more realistic setting.

by luisa09 4 weeks ago

I love fantasy and am always looking for recommendations. Much obliged! 20-30 hours does seem to be the average. I have listened to a couple 50+ hour monsters, and it was quite the chore.

by Shawnchamplin 4 weeks ago

Word length varies widely, from 1 letter to 20 letters. So no

by Worried_Clerk2436 4 weeks ago

So should it be letter count?

by Margarita37 4 weeks ago

It's because they number the pages but they don't number the words

by Shoddy-Platypus8911 4 weeks ago

It's probably because they number the pages but they don't number the words.

by Shoddy-Platypus8911 4 weeks ago

Nah, I could make the font huge and 300 pages, but less than 300 words. So it would seem extremely short by the word count, but the length of the book would be deceptively long.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

The old college paper trick.

by Pete08 4 weeks ago

To be fair it's kind of in the same way that people will say Oh this pothole was the size of two washing machines because it's just easier for people to visualize than saying oh this pothole was roughly 3.5 m by 2.7 m

by Sea_Lettuce_8347 4 weeks ago

I work in publishing. In my particular field of work pages are irrelevant, the important number is characters or words, in that specific order.

by rashawn69 4 weeks ago

I have a certain fascination with word counts of books. You could be surprised by the word counts of your favorite books. Font size and page thickness can also play a part in the illusion of a book's size. Take for example the Harry Pitter books Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix. Goblet is 190,000 words while Order is 257,000 words. Yet the American hardcover versions are ENORMOUS.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Word count is indeed more precise(precision and accuracy aren't the same), but page number is precise enough, especially when you get into hundreds of pages. Then measuring it by even down to a single page is too precise.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago