For obvious reasons, the page count is most commonly used to indicate how long a book is. But even without considering different formats, it should be obvious that some books have much longer paragraphs and a higher text density than others. For example, light novels tend do be heavy on dialogues, meaning less text per site on average.
Because I was curious, I did the math for some of the digital books I own and divided the total # of characters by the page count (physical versions). Here are some of the results:
Book | Pages | # Chars | per Page |
---|---|---|---|
貝に続く場所にて | 162 | 93344 | 576 |
映画を作りながら考えたこと | 391 | 198971 | 509 |
坊っちゃん | 180 | 88887 | 494 |
人間失格 | 150 | 73280 | 489 |
世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド 上 | 480 | 222617 | 464 |
精霊の守り人 | 350 | 152776 | 437 |
月の森に、カミよ眠れ | 243 | 105440 | 434 |
鹿の王 1 | 290 | 125374 | 432 |
兎の眼 | 351 | 149982 | 427 |
博士の愛した数式 | 291 | 124325 | 427 |
走ることについて語るときに僕の語ること | 272 | 116122 | 427 |
雪国 | 173 | 73753 | 426 |
獣の奏者 外伝 刹那 | 400 | 156844 | 392 |
物語ること、生きること | 224 | 86470 | 386 |
カラフル | 259 | 98903 | 382 |
夜のピクニック | 455 | 172837 | 380 |
コーヒーが冷めないうちに | 348 | 127543 | 367 |
推し、燃ゆ | 144 | 52334 | 363 |
神さまたちの遊ぶ庭 | 325 | 115933 | 357 |
魔女の宅急便その6 | 407 | 141969 | 349 |
かあちゃんに会いたい | 203 | 56890 | 280 |
俺の彼 | 221 | 61834 | 280 |
帰ってきたよ、ばあちゃん | 197 | 52766 | 268 |
— | — | — | — |
Average | 284 | 111628 | 392 |
As you can see, the difference between first and last place is huge, like, a 100 % difference. As expected, the more literary works occupy the top spots. #1 does not have a published bunkobon version (only hardcover), so 576 might be a bit misleading, but I’m sure it would still be near the top. 兎の眼, 精霊の守り人 and コーヒーが冷めないうちに are a bigger format and 推し、燃ゆ a smaller hardcover format. 魔女の宅急便その6 is slightly bigger, but has plenty of illustrations. All others are bunkobon versions.
Bunkobon pages have 16 columns with 38 characters each, so they can hold a maximum of 608 characters. The number may be significantly higher for hardcover or bigger paperback formats.
Oh, and 世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド is not only incredibly long and dense – it’s also only the first half. Sasuga, Murakami.