If you poke around online enough, then there is the potential to stumble upon debates relating to book length and what supposedly counts as a proper book.
In essence, these sorts of online spats tend to centre around two key points. First, the page count where a book actually becomes a book; second, whether or not it is cheating to count short publications as separate, notable reads on your reading log.
Although I am not the Lord of Books, I am here to address and answer both these points in an attempt to help clarify whether or not reading shorter works is, in some strange way, a form of ‘cheating’ your to-read list or reading log.
How Many Pages Is a Book?
Any, technically. There is no true specified amount, because a book is more about the format of how pages are bound to a spine. However, this sort of assertion has become rather philosophical and cloudy with the rise of e-books—do you only count them as books if they have a physical counterpart? No, because an increasing amount of publications are digital-only.
Generally, I’d say anything around thirty pages or above (approximately 7,500 words) is acceptable to be counted as an individual read. You would be hard pressed to find lone physical books that are shorter than thirty pages.
For those wanting to argue, consider short, separate works, like those from the Faber Stories series. These specific releases, despite being sub-fifty pages, are clearly individual works that are published as unique titles under an umbrella of works, rather than being a story in a complete compilation. Faber’s short story campaign suggests that 30–50 pages is an acceptable amount to consider as a book.
Page Count Complications
However, such short works being stand-alone invites another debate about where one should draw the line on considering a publication as an individual read.
If one fifty-page short story is a complete work, and another fifty-page story is part of a compilation that spans hundreds of pages, are they both separate reads? Although some might say yes, I would say no, and I’ll explain my reasoning below.
Calling a Spade a Spade
If it is a fully stand-alone book, then it’s a book. If it is a story inside a compilation, then that is not a book, rather just part of a book, much like a chapter in a novel is.
The only real exception would be when novellas or novels are combined into one binding. I think that is the only case where you could say, ‘This book has two novels inside of it, and they are from different years, so those are two separately counted works.’ That’s acceptable.
However, you can’t say that you read fifty books this year and then cite a ~300-page compilation of six-page short stories. That’s insanity, and you know it is. That would definitely be ‘cheating’ on your reading log.
In essence, a short story compilation would only count as one book under my rule set, but a compilation of novels or novellas (such as The Short Novels of John Steinbeck or the handful of Haruki Murakami’s dual novel releases, like Wind / Pinball: Two Novels) should have each work within counted individually.
For a very simple example, if I read The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, that is a singular book to be noted on my reading log. If I read Wind / Pinball by Murakami, then Wind counts as one book, whilst Pinball counts as another, totalling out to two unique items on my reading log. But that’s just my rule.
So, Is It Cheating?
I would say no, and not just because I’m guilty of reading many short works (especially towards the final months of the year). I am saying no because I think it is rather foolish to discount or discredit works just because they are short.
You can’t riff on a short story for being a short story instead of a novel when the author had no intention to write a novel-length story. Additionally, publications should be valued on their content, the emotions they evoke, what they provide readers with, on top of their overall quality and uniqueness. Ignoring all that and trying to argue that longer equals better is both daft and obtuse.
Moreover, you can’t cheat, this isn’t an officially sanctioned competition! You read for you; pleasure, entertainment, escapism, enlightenment, information, education, and whatever other reasons. Readers should count things how they want to, and feel free to be lenient with themselves if that is what seems preferable.
This post is more so guidance about a niche issue that rarely crops up, it is not the ultimate law. Still, for those looking for baseline rules: if it is a stand-alone work, count it as such, with the exception of most short story compilations, where that particular compilation becomes one stand-alone publication.
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