Ideas & Suggestions
Pages
This might seem like an odd request/suggestion, but is it possible to know how many pages you have read in one of the installments, as if you were reading a hard copy of the book? I like to keep track of pages read for my book blog, but I can't figure that out with the Daily Lit books.
Replies (8)
Posted by
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It might not tie up exactly with the pages but there are two possible alternatives.
If you imagine one installment is the length of a single page then your page number is the number of your current installment. This may not be exact but as different editions of books have different length pages it should not be far off.
Alternatively, if you look at your profile it shows what percentage you are through each book. You could use this as a different means of tracking progress.May 21, 2009 9:29 am
by cresswga -
Thanks for your response, cresswga.
If you don't already have our bookroll widget (which you can get on your Settings page), you could use that to show your progress on your blog. It does show the percentage of the book completed.May 21, 2009 10:30 am
by MaggieH (admin) -
I knew there was a blog widget but as I don't have a blog and haven't used it I couldn't remember where it was :)
by cresswga -
Well, I would like page numbers because as a high school student, I am required to do some reading on classics and apparently, listing page numbers is part of the requirement. In other words, I have to buy the book now instead of simply reading it online for free :(
Jul 28, 2009 5:17 pm
by Nukedoom -
@Nukedoom Maybe you could track your progress by chapters rather than page numbers? Or you might be able to borrow the books you need from your local library for free.
by MaggieH (admin) -
Nukedoom: Go to Amazon.com and look up your book. It will say how many pages the book has.
For example, I am reading Dracula at the moment and that apparently has 448 pages in this edition:
http://www.amazon.com/Dracula-Penguin-Popular-Classics-Stoker/dp/014062063X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248881843&sr=1-3
I am currently 3% complete which means I am on page 448 / (100 * 3) = page 13.
by cresswga -
I think being able to keep track of pages would add more of the familiar aspect of that "reading a book" feel to the DailyLit experience.
A simple adjustment would be formatting the HTML e-mail installments with page breaks. Right now, it looks like one long scroll of paper - just by adding a thin strip of gray space between each page and the page number to the bottom right-hand corner would give it the look of having pages. As for plain text e-mails, a horizontal line could be added to the blocks of text to indicate page breaks.
In general, when people are talking about how far they're into a book, they’d want to say "page 246" instead of "installment 39 of 52" or do math in their head to and use a percentage. Specific pages would be especially helpful for students. But if it's too much work to do it page-by-page, it could be possible to do one round of providing page ranges for installments, then paginate in the second round.Dec 12, 2009 1:53 pm
by zhanghenglai -
The problem we'd face is that we source our classic books from sites like Project Gutenberg, which don't track pagination of the ebook versions of the classics. It would require quite a lot of painstaking work to reinsert page breaks to our 600+ books, and for right now we're focusing our attention on bringing you more great free content, since that is our most popular request.
by MaggieH (admin)