How big is that e-book anyway?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Teyrnon

What are the advantages of pages anyway? One I can think of is the ability to cite references to individual pages. I see this as less useful with an ebook where pages are going to be somewhat dynamic. Paragraph numbers within chapters might be best. Rather than referring to page 127 we'd instead refer to Ch. 5 Paragraph 11. Maybe even write that as something like Ch. 5-11 or some such. It'd allow greater precision.

Please turn your digital eBooks to the text at memory location 0x285768BF

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

[astra]

Originally Posted by msundman

I have no idea what you're trying to communicate (e.g., I don't see how neither of us could be seen as quick to judge in this conversation - I first asked some questions to clarify what you meant and your answer made my conclusion obvious, and I even named the reason for the conclusion), but being quick to judge is certainly orthogonal to being confused. Let's not get carried away on tangents like these, OK?

Are you playing smartass?
I give up on you

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ahi

Actually, since apparently scrolls have pages too, my comparison makes less sense than I initially thought... while my questioning of the presumed discarding of the page paradigm probably makes even more sense... pages having been seen useful and/or necessary even before scrolls became books.

- Ahi

Certainly scrolls have pages. Their primary disadvantage is that they are like cassette tapes compared to CD-ROMs; they don't support "random access" to an arbitrary page and, after you've finished reading it, you have to wind it back to the beginning for the next reader.

If you read Latin literature as I do, you'll find all sorts of "moans" about the rudeness of people who don't rewind their scrolls after they've finished with them!

[Hellmark]

I always have FBreader set to show the page count, and my 505 does the same. Works for me, and really I'll be selfish, but that is all I care about. If I tell someone about something, I either whip it out or show them, or go "halfway through chapter 5" because that's the best I can remember.

I do notice that with my settings, books tend to be fewer pages than the printed version when using my N800. 500 page book ends up being 350. Not the case on my 505 though. On the 505, with small font size (DAMN YOU SONY! I want smaller!), I'm reading Wizard and Glass, and it weighs in about 1280 pages. Looking at amazon, the hardcover is 704 pages, and 752 on the paperback.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you read Latin literature as I do, you'll find all sorts of "moans" about the rudeness of people who don't rewind their scrolls after they've finished with them!

Hehe, now we know where the saying "Be Kind, Rewind." came from!

[msundman]

Originally Posted by astra

Are you playing smartass?
I give up on you

Uh.. no, I'm not "playing smartass". You keep replying with things that seem to have no relevance regarding what you're replying to. If you have something meaningful to say then say it (and try to keep it relevant to what you're replying to), but there's no need for personal attacks such as "quick to judge" or "playing smartass", be they direct or indirect.

[msundman]

Originally Posted by Teyrnon

I still think word count is the best way to really gauge the length of a text.

Do you think word count is a better gauge than character count, and if so, why?

I've already shown by example how character count works better with (some) different languages. Character count also provides for a very nice conversion factor for people still used only to page counts, since 1k characters is approximately 1 page (well, a quite small page, like in a pocket book, not like in those big hardcovers, but still).

The only reason I can think of why word count would have any advantage is the same as with page counts, namely that people currently are a bit more used to it. However, because of the nice kchar<->page conversion I wouldn't consider even this to be any advantage, since people are even more used to page counts than to word counts.

[Teyrnon]

Originally Posted by msundman

Do you think word count is a better gauge than character count, and if so, why?

Well, the basic unit of language is arguably the word. Sure words are different lengths but it does average out. Character count isn't reflective of the language nor does it really give a good idea of speed. Speed readers in particular tend to read words as discrete entities whether that word is 1 character long or 9 the word is read at the same speed. Character count tells me nothing useful about the text, word count atleast gives me an idea of how long it is in meaningful units of language. Also, word count produces more manageable values. I'd rather talk about a 150,000 word novel rather than a 1.1 megabyte novel.

By the way, your 1K=1 Page figure seems a little odd. 1K in English works out to about 150 words. That's a really tiny page. If I'm not mistaken the average pocket size paperback is about 500 words to a page.

[ggareau]

I'm used to page numbers meaning absolutely nothing because I go back and forth between pop fiction, philosophy, and science. Some books are thick with big fonts, some are thick with tiny fonts. Some even have thinner paper than other books.

At least with my Sony Reader I know that I'll get through 2-3 pages per minute and most pop fiction is between 600-900 pages, most science books are between 1000-2000, and giant books like The Stand and War and Peace are 2000-3500.

If I see a book that's less than 300 pages, it's short.

Relative size. It works.

[zacheryjensen]

Originally Posted by Teyrnon

Well, the basic unit of language is arguably the word. Sure words are different lengths but it does average out. Character count isn't reflective of the language nor does it really give a good idea of speed. Speed readers in particular tend to read words as discrete entities whether that word is 1 character long or 9 the word is read at the same speed. Character count tells me nothing useful about the text, word count atleast gives me an idea of how long it is in meaningful units of language. Also, word count produces more manageable values. I'd rather talk about a 150,000 word novel rather than a 1.1 megabyte novel.

By the way, your 1K=1 Page figure seems a little odd. 1K in English works out to about 150 words. That's a really tiny page. If I'm not mistaken the average pocket size paperback is about 500 words to a page.

Interestingly, scientific studies show that the glyphic role of a word is true for just about everyone but those most determined to violate the pattern. So in other words, everyone reads that way even if they don't read fast. You only delve into a word when you don't know it already, to interpret it, and thus try to decipher its meaning and sound.

So I say, use word counts, learn the general idea of your personal "Words Per Minute" reading speed, and now you can judge what is a long or short book for yourself.

With regards to the concerns about referencing books, that's a more valid concern than anything the OP noted. That is a trivial problem to solve if people actually consistently structured their document itself, however, that doesn't happen, not in fiction anyway. If you read legal drafts or technical documentation, it's always broken down in referenceable units, so much so that you can say "Section 4.1.3.2, Paragraph 3, Sentence 5, Word 7" and be consistent regardless of whether it's printed in one size, or not printed at all.

So if you can get every fiction writer to use exactly the same document structuring concepts, then ok But even the same story reprinted over time is going to lose page number matching, so you certainly can't count on that. It's easy to forget, but eventually, worthwhile books are printed again, usually with new intros and such, maybe even with minor modifications (See Lord of the Rings as a great example)

Also usage of chapters, chapter breaks, and so on is inconsistent so I'm not so sure that's valuable without a strict formation either. In reality, when we're talking about these sort of old fashioned patterns of reference in the face of modern technology, it's fairly silly. You could easily tell someone to search for the paragraph that starts with "blah" and ends with "blech" and maybe mention it's in a particular chapter, and they can easily use the searching tools of any worthwhile reading app/device to find that exactly paragraph.

Let's not intentionally ignore the conveniences that come right along with the loss of page numbers.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Teyrnon

Well, the basic unit of language is arguably the word. Sure words are different lengths but it does average out. Character count isn't reflective of the language nor does it really give a good idea of speed. Speed readers in particular tend to read words as discrete entities whether that word is 1 character long or 9 the word is read at the same speed. Character count tells me nothing useful about the text, word count atleast gives me an idea of how long it is in meaningful units of language.

What extra information does word count give you that is not available in character count? I mean you have to know what language the text is in both cases and what properties this language have. And if you know this the different measurements seems equivalent to me.

By the way, your 1K=1 Page figure seems a little odd. 1K in English works out to about 150 words. That's a really tiny page. If I'm not mistaken the average pocket size paperback is about 500 words to a page.

Taking a random book and counting characters and lines I got around 60 characters per line and 35 lines per page. About 2K but then you have to reduce this a bit since not all lines are full. So neared 1K then 3K (500 word).

[Teyrnon]

Originally Posted by tompe

What extra information does word count give you that is not available in character count? I mean you have to know what language the text is in both cases and what properties this language have. And if you know this the different measurements seems equivalent to me.

What? I've already answered this question. I have no desire to endlessly reiterate myself so I'll try to break it down now. I've given two main reasons 1) Word count provides a useful metric for determining how fast a text can be read. People read words not individual letters. 2) Word count provides smaller numerical values than character count. Perhaps it might be more useful to ask why do you think character count would be superior to word count?

If the two seem equivalent then why would you prefer the one that yields the higher numerical values?

[Teyrnon]

Originally Posted by tompe

Taking a random book and counting characters and lines I got around 60 characters per line and 35 lines per page. About 2K but then you have to reduce this a bit since not all lines are full. So neared 1K then 3K (500 word).

This is somewhat tricky. How are you gauging line length? If you're counting the characters (letters, spaces, punctuation marks, etc) of the first line and multiplying by the number of lines to arrive at a character count for the page, that's potentially very misleading. Unless the book is printed in a monospace typeface, the actual numbers of characters per line are going to vary somewhat perhaps even widely.

[BenG]

Originally Posted by Daithi

On the Kndle DX each book is represented with a series of dots under each title, so it is easy to compare the relative lengths of different books. When reading a specific title you can see the percent read, and each chapter is marked on the bottom of the screen to let you know how far you need to go to get to the next chapter.

I have a few books on my kindle that I've also read in paperback. On the home pages I can compare the length of the series of dots on those books to the dots on the other books and can get an approximation of the length of those books.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Teyrnon

This is somewhat tricky. How are you gauging line length? If you're counting the characters (letters, spaces, punctuation marks, etc) of the first line and multiplying by the number of lines to arrive at a character count for the page, that's potentially very misleading. Unless the book is printed in a monospace typeface, the actual numbers of characters per line are going to vary somewhat perhaps even widely.

The fact of the matter is, though, that ADE's 1k "page counts" are pretty much always reasonably near to the page count of the equivalent paperback. That's a simple matter of observation.