Why are 'Chapters' and 'Word Count' and not 'Pages' used as the main metric for story length when searching on this site?

[jojmist]

Literally no one describes a book's/story's length by using how many chapters or words it has. It is almost universally by how many 'pages' a book has. How many chapters a story has is arbitrary since chapter lengths vary widely, and word count for an average book can have a humongous range (for example, an average 50 page book has about 15,000 words, but an average 350 page book has over 100,000 words; would you prefer to know the length of a book by its pages or word count?). Using a way more common and easily understood metric that people actually use should be the automatic go-to on this site, and should be more visible for readers to determine how much of a story has been created. Right now, page amount is listed last on the Statistics tab. The 'pages' amount should be more readily available and visible to readers. This is common sense and used on other much more popular novel sites like RoyalRoad.

 

[HURGMCGURG]

Pages is pretty arbitrary too. You can put a lot of words or a few words on a page. We're reading and writing with a different medium. Adjust.

 

[K5Rakitan]

Even with standardized font size, margins, spacing, etc. how many words per page you get may vary due to the author's writing style. Word count is overall the best metric.

 

[AkalE]

I agree with the chapter part of the OP.
There are many authors that have chapters in 80s but hardly 1000 words in a chapter. While others with half the number of chapters could have more wordcount.

I think it comes down to a sort of clickbait. Most readers of webfics are binge readers. So more the number of chapters, more likely are readers to pick up the story...

In conclusion, is it a sensible, no. Does it need to be changed? Meh, no.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

Literally no one describes a book's/story's length by using how many chapters or words it has.

This is true... for traditionally published novels or even just self-published novels bought through commercial platforms. Not web serials.

Chapters give readers a better idea of the release rate. It doesn't matter whether you're posting a single 50,000-word chapter a month or a single 1,000-word chapter per day. People will see the larger chapter count of the smaller novel, even though it would also display less pages, and they will choose it simply because it has more chapters. I have, after 3 years of this now, hardly ever heard any reader nor author refer to how long a web serial is in pages. I have only ever heard people refer to them in chapter and word counts. I'm sure there are some who might hear page counts brought up more often, but it is extremely rare for me to hear it. And I lurk pretty damn hard in web serial communities.

Word count is just more specific. You mentioned that the average 350-page book will be over 100,000 words. In reality, most fictional books are judged to have between 250 and 275 words per page. That's only 87,500 words (by Kindle's standards) to 96,250 words (by RR's standards). Why use something way more subjective than just giving people the straight-up word count? Word count is the most honest metric you can give people to determine how long a series is.

 

[AliceShiki]

Literally no one describes a book's/story's length by using how many chapters or words it has. It is almost universally by how many 'pages' a book has. How many chapters a story has is arbitrary since chapter lengths vary widely, and word count for an average book can have a humongous range (for example, an average 50 page book has about 15,000 words, but an average 350 page book has over 100,000 words; would you prefer to know the length of a book by its pages or word count?). Using a way more common and easily understood metric that people actually use should be the automatic go-to on this site, and should be more visible for readers to determine how much of a story has been created. Right now, page amount is listed last on the Statistics tab. The 'pages' amount should be more readily available and visible to readers. This is common sense and used on other much more popular novel sites like RoyalRoad.

Published novels tend to measure by pages, webnovels tend to measure by chapters or word count.

You're just unused to the medium, but page count is not the norm for webnovels.

Also, a measurement of pages for webnovels feels kinda weird in all honesty, like... What is the page and font size to begin with? A4 with Arial 12? Or A5 with Times New Roman 16?

Those things change the amount of words in a page by a large margin.

 

[YuriDoggo]

RR uses mainly page count and it's fucking garbage. When I see word count, I can extrapolate based on my own experience writing and reading how long it is. When I see page count, I'm just lost, like oookay, how long is a page? Hardcover page or paperback page? Big book page or small book page? How many words are on a page anyway?

Much easier to just use word count.

On web novels, word count is by far the superior measure and every site that uses page count should change it.

 

[DracoNonDeo]

RR uses mainly page count and it's fucking garbage. When I see word count, I can extrapolate based on my own experience writing and reading how long it is. When I see page count, I'm just lost, like oookay, how long is a page? Hardcover page or paperback page? Big book page or small book page? How many words are on a page anyway?

Much easier to just use word count.

On web novels, word count is by far the superior measure and every site that uses page count should change it.

this might be just me as an avid reader but page count is more helpful for me to understand how long the book is since while I might know how long it would take to write 30 000 words I can't really tell you how long it would take me to read 30 000 words. So I personally like RR's page count expressly considering that I know RR has each page at 275 words so if I ever need to determine the word count its a simple calculation.

 

[Cipiteca396]

SH's page count is 275 words per page, as far as I know. The option is there for anyone who wants to use it, so I'm not sure what you're trying to ask for. This reads more like a rant than a feature request.

I personally don't see the need to use page count over word count. Either is just as good as the other, and both are freely available.

I think the Average Words metric is underrated though.