MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - How big is that e-book anyway?

Bob Russell · 08-31-2009, 07:37 PM

I'm prone to strange musings when I'm tired. Tonight, I noticed something - When reading an e-book, it's very hard to get an idea of how thick or long a book is. It's not hard with a paper book. You look at it, or feel the weight, maybe look at the last page, and then you peek at a few sample pages to see how much fits on each page. Then you just sort of "know" how long the book is, and what the page count means.

But when you read an e-book, how is one to know how long the book is? I confess that to get an idea of the length, I generally do some research and check out the number of pages of the print version. Or if I'm reading a lot, then my mind remembers that magic paper-to-device page conversion factor at my favorite font size. That gives me a general feel for the length of the corresponding "real" book in paper form. Usually the e-book has a lot more pages than the paper version, especially if I'm reading on my Treo phone.

But if I don't have that magic conversion factor in my head, or if I am trying to determine how long an e-book is on a device that is new to me, it's kind of a mystery. How do I describe the book length to someone else? Some of the e-books I bought seemed like they were the equivalent of ~300 pages to me. But after looking it up, I find I bought e-books that were only about the equivalent of a bit over 100 pages. I knew it was a really quick read, but wow. I have to admit that I felt a little cheated at first, because I didn't realize how short they were when I was purchasing them. (Actually, I would have bought them anyway - they were really good!)

Now, even if paper books go away (not likely for a long, long time), there will probably still be a place for an typeset version in some format like pdf. I've never heard anyone conjecture that, but it seems self-evident to me that typesetting properly done adds greatly to the reading experience. The nicely formatted e-books available at MobileRead are a good demonstration of the value of presentation. So not everything is likely to be entirely flowable, re-sizeable text.

But... what if there really is no fixed text size? (After all, who is really going to bother nicely typesetting the average fiction e-book in the future?) Then how will we describe e-book length?

I can't think of any other alternative besides word count, and that seems to incredibly unsatisfying and aesthetically crude. It reminds me too much of school days, I suppose. But if there is no fixed standard page number to compare against, what else can we do? I suppose we could agree on a certain common text size and page layout in electronic form and make that the "agreed upon" number of pages in a book. But that seems silly to me also.

This may ruffle some feathers, or you may have some thoughts that make me realize how silly I am, but as wonderful as e-books are, I think that the corresponding paper books are awfully nice, even for simple things like setting a standard for the number of pages.

08-31-2009, 07:37 PM	#1
Bob Russell Recovering Gadget Addict Posts: 5,381 Karma: 676161 Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Device: iPad	How big is that e-book anyway? I'm prone to strange musings when I'm tired. Tonight, I noticed something - When reading an e-book, it's very hard to get an idea of how thick or long a book is. It's not hard with a paper book. You look at it, or feel the weight, maybe look at the last page, and then you peek at a few sample pages to see how much fits on each page. Then you just sort of "know" how long the book is, and what the page count means. But when you read an e-book, how is one to know how long the book is? I confess that to get an idea of the length, I generally do some research and check out the number of pages of the print version. Or if I'm reading a lot, then my mind remembers that magic paper-to-device page conversion factor at my favorite font size. That gives me a general feel for the length of the corresponding "real" book in paper form. Usually the e-book has a lot more pages than the paper version, especially if I'm reading on my Treo phone. But if I don't have that magic conversion factor in my head, or if I am trying to determine how long an e-book is on a device that is new to me, it's kind of a mystery. How do I describe the book length to someone else? Some of the e-books I bought seemed like they were the equivalent of ~300 pages to me. But after looking it up, I find I bought e-books that were only about the equivalent of a bit over 100 pages. I knew it was a really quick read, but wow. I have to admit that I felt a little cheated at first, because I didn't realize how short they were when I was purchasing them. (Actually, I would have bought them anyway - they were really good!) Now, even if paper books go away (not likely for a long, long time), there will probably still be a place for an typeset version in some format like pdf. I've never heard anyone conjecture that, but it seems self-evident to me that typesetting properly done adds greatly to the reading experience. The nicely formatted e-books available at MobileRead are a good demonstration of the value of presentation. So not everything is likely to be entirely flowable, re-sizeable text. But... what if there really is no fixed text size? (After all, who is really going to bother nicely typesetting the average fiction e-book in the future?) Then how will we describe e-book length? I can't think of any other alternative besides word count, and that seems to incredibly unsatisfying and aesthetically crude. It reminds me too much of school days, I suppose. But if there is no fixed standard page number to compare against, what else can we do? I suppose we could agree on a certain common text size and page layout in electronic form and make that the "agreed upon" number of pages in a book. But that seems silly to me also. This may ruffle some feathers, or you may have some thoughts that make me realize how silly I am, but as wonderful as e-books are, I think that the corresponding paper books are awfully nice, even for simple things like setting a standard for the number of pages.