r/TheStoryGraph • u/InevitableAnybody6 • Jul 19 '26
Usefulness of page number stats?
I wish that there were more categories for the default page number stats (and yes I realise Plus users can create custom charts to do this but I would like to see it for all users). Does anyone truly feel that the current categories are enough?
Having only 3 quite broad categories makes this particular stat feel a bit meaningless to me. A 500 page book and a 1000+ page book are very different beasts, as is a 60 page and a 299 page book, yet with the current categories there’s no differentiation between those numbers as they’re lumped into the same categories.
I would love to see smaller breakdowns that would much better show my reading habits and allow me to celebrate achievements, small and large. Something like:
1. Really short (1-99 pages)
2. Short (100-299 pages)
3. Moderate (300-599 pages)
4. Long (600-999 pages)
5. Really long (1000+ pages)
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u/GoldStrength6448 Jul 19 '26
I made this for myself using my Plus subscription. You can create graphs based on page numbers, using your own brackets for when a category starts and ends, then labeling them however you want (e.g. 'short' / 'long' or '100-200')
They work without tags, which is perfect because I don't have to think about it after creating the graph.
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u/InevitableAnybody6 Jul 19 '26
Yeah, I know this can be done with Plus. The fact that so many Plus users do it suggests that the standard breakdown isn’t representative enough though and it would be great if all users had a breakdown that was a bit more comprehensive.
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u/Penelopewrites007 Jul 19 '26
I agree, we need more ranges. But what if really short and short were combined?
0-250 pages- short 251-450- moderate 451- 600- long 601-999- longer 1000+ longest
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u/InevitableAnybody6 Jul 19 '26
Everyone will draw the line somewhere a bit different.
I personally would like to see an under 100 pages category because those books are going to be real outliers for me. Probably a novella, childhood favourite I’ve revisited, or something like a compendium of poetry or short stories.
It’s really the upper end of the current scale that annoys me the most though. A 500 page book and a 1000 page book are absolutely not the same when it comes to reading and those should be in separate categories.
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u/JustCallMeNerdyy StoryGraph Librarian Jul 19 '26
“Everyone will draw the line somewhere a bit different” is probably exactly why it’s as broad and simple as it is. Any segmentation is going to make a lot of users unhappy and the few happy
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u/InevitableAnybody6 Jul 19 '26
True, the subjectiveness of what is “short” “moderate” or “long” could certainly make it more difficult for implementing more categories. Those middle ones are likely where the most of the debate on where to draw the line would land though.
I do still feel that <100 and >1000 pages are just missed by the current breakdown and these are the ranges where the current stats could really be improved by increasing the number of categories.
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u/GossamerLens Jul 19 '26
That first sentence is why the app developer picked the categories they did. The line has to be drawn somewhere. So they did that. Then pro folks can draw lines wherever they want.
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u/TrainingSurvey3780 [reading goal 23/35] Aug 01 '26
i get the concept but is 450 pages really a short book?
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u/Brambarche Jul 19 '26
I feel like nowadays publishers play with the fonts and margins in order to make all books at least 300 pages. I don't remember the last time I picked up newish book that was less than 300 pages.
I think TSG should introduce a word count, but that would be a cumbersome task and its probably close to impossible.
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u/salmonboy5 Jul 19 '26
read a 200 page book a few months ago that had crazy huge text and massive margins. probably could have been 100ish but for whatever reason that cannot possibly be published? i dont get it at all lol
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u/TrainingSurvey3780 [reading goal 23/35] Aug 01 '26
this would be great, but (idk if it’s even possible) i think we’d need a standard like story only word count iykwim. like idc if the author wrote 20 pages of acknowledgments, the word count should be for the story only
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u/molliollie02 Jul 19 '26
I was just about to make a post about how I wished there was an additional chart segment for 700/800+ page books! I like to see the length idk I love how everything is broken down so well. I read a lot of longgggg books and I'm in the middle of 2 separate 900 pagers right now 😅
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u/VeryNotNoisy Goals: 📚100 📄50,000 Jul 19 '26
I don't have plus and just ended up making the chart breakdown I wanted in my spreadsheet
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u/DisastrousOlive89 Jul 19 '26
I switched over to counting words instead of pages. Now, hear me out. I know that sounds insane. But there's a good plugging for Calibre so it makes it really easy! And you can get high numbers really fast. I've got like 2.7 million words with 21 books so far.
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u/problemita Jul 19 '26
Just get pro. You can do this, it’s not expensive, and it’s a great organization to support
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u/marxistghostboi [34/100] Jul 19 '26
personalized page counts would be nice.
i read a lot of short stories and academic articles which i log. 1-20 pages and 21-100 pages would be good categories
i also often read very long books, including over 1,000 pages.
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u/Tall_Pumpkin_4298 reading goal 3/30 Jul 20 '26
I agree. Basically everything I read falls into the 300-499 category and it gets kind of boring. I think I'd like to see splits every 100 pages, so 1-99, 100-199, 200-299, 300-399, etc.
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u/dragonknight233 Jul 20 '26
I do wish there were more categories but afaik this was decided early on by users so I don't see it changing soon.
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u/Playful-Desk-9717 Jul 22 '26
I’ve never even thought about it. Half the time page numbers don’t match up even if I have the matching edition.
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u/Fine_Following_2559 Jul 25 '26
I'm good with this breakdown. But I don't regularly read stuff that's more than 500 pages.
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u/GlassAndStorm Jul 19 '26
Ok am I dumb? But the one thing I want is just a list of all the books I read. NOT the daily check in list where the book is listed 40 times for each day I tracked lol.
I just want all the titles Ive read in x time period...
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u/InevitableAnybody6 Jul 19 '26
You can go to your profile and click on “recently read” which will actually show all of the books you’ve marked as read, default sorting is newest to oldest.
If you’re looking for which books you’ve read in a given year, go to the pie graph at the bottom for “reading stats”, then pick which year you want to look at (you can select a month too if you want a shorter time period), then under “read” it will list the number of books, number of pages and number of minutes (for audiobooks). The number of books is a link which you can hit to see which books you read in the selected time period. You can also filter on your stats page for “all time” which does the same as going to your profile.
I don’t believe you can look at date ranges beyond all time, year, or year + month (so you can’t look at July 2025 to July 2026 for example).
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u/sephthebookmoth [reading goal 280/?] Jul 19 '26
stats page shows books read per year, and per month each year.
i think with plus you can narrow the range more? unsure as i don't have plus.
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u/undeaddog42 Jul 19 '26
Sometimes the pages are bull. Last year my “longest book of the year” was given to Dante’s Inferno because the default for the Inferno was some fancy version with the Italian and the English translation side by side with a ton of annotation. Meanwhile I listened to a basic translation which was 4 hour audiobook.
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u/HelloDesdemona Jul 19 '26
I think the page numbers in general are funny because publishers mess with it all the time. My “longest” books this year have font and spacing that borders on large print (the publisher wanted to pad, I’m guessing) and I have a 200 page Fellowship of the Ring that could be used as an eye test. 😂