How do you log reading made on a Kindle?

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Stefan
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How do you log reading made on a Kindle?

Postby Stefan » Sun Jan 20, 2019 10:41 pm

Long story short: I read slightly less than 19 chapters (<50% according to my Kindle) in a book before losing interest and continuing with other books. Today, maybe six months later, I picked it up again only to find that the book contained a total of 21 chapters. :oops: This is becoming an issue for me since I'm trying to log the number of pages I read each year.

Up until now I've been logging the pages of the corresponding paper version. I'm not happy with it but it's the best method I can think of. Unfortunately it creates an issue whenever I continue reading a book in the new year. My thinking was that I could just multiply the pages with the current percentage but as you see - the result is way off. You could make a similar estimate by looking at the number of chapters but it's dependent on the fact that they keep an even length.

At the end of the day I get that each page and book is different, making it almost impossible to get accurate data but I still want something to aim at.

How do you log your reading on Kindle?
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Re: How do you log reading made on a Kindle?

Postby Ani » Sun Jan 20, 2019 11:29 pm

You can fix the percentage problem by flipping to the last actual page of the book and noting the percentage. Sometimes it's as low as 86%

The math on that is then:

Current percentage * 100 / percentage where the book ends = adjusted current percentage read

Then you could multiply that by total pages in the print book.

Hopefully I am not messing up my math publicly :lol: :lol: and it's clear enough what I'm trying to say :)
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Re: How do you log reading made on a Kindle?

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Jan 21, 2019 12:18 am

If you know your general reading speed you can convert time reading to pages (and just time how long you read for then convert to pages).

I do this for when I am reading to the children with children's books - often several different books of various sizes, shapes and forms. I know my 'normal' reading speed for a typical book (non-children's) so I work out a conversion rate. I've done the same for ebooks (ibooks/kindle app), so that if I read for 20 min/ 30 min/ 60 min I just convert that to how many pages I read per hour normally and adjust it downwards if I've spent a lot of time looking up words.
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Re: How do you log reading made on a Kindle?

Postby coldrainwater » Mon Jan 21, 2019 4:04 am

To keep consistent, I decided to call 300 words = 1 page. For convenience, I always use Calibre to convert my books to text and then let a text editor (like notepad++ in my case) count how many words I have read or am to read. Works pretty well for me across formats and devices.
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Re: How do you log reading made on a Kindle?

Postby NoManches » Mon Jan 21, 2019 5:00 am

I like to find out how many pages the paperback version of my ebook has (I usually look it up on Amazon). From there I use the percentage that is shown on my Kindle to get an idea of how many pages I've read

So if the paperback version of my ebook has 400 pages, and my Kindle says I've read 25%, I think it's relatively safe to assume I've read 100 pages. Keep in mind that for every chapter I read in a book, I definitely read some of the pages multiple times (usually because I have the bad habit of falling asleep while reading). So even if the book percentage isn't really accurate, or the percentage takes into account a table of contents or ads or whatever, I know that in the end I'm probably reading even more pages than I accounted for.
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Re: How do you log reading made on a Kindle?

Postby lingua » Mon Jan 21, 2019 6:37 am

NoManches wrote:Keep in mind that for every chapter I read in a book, I definitely read some of the pages multiple times (usually because I have the bad habit of falling asleep while reading). So even if the book percentage isn't really accurate, or the percentage takes into account a table of contents or ads or whatever, I know that in the end I'm probably reading even more pages than I accounted for.


That's a lot like how I do it down to falling asleep while reading which causes a certain amount of rereading the next day to remind myself of what has most recently occurred in the book. I use the page count from the publisher because I've found Amazon to be inaccurate at times and in some instances they have no page count at all. If I decide I won't finish a book and want to put it in the SC I'll just do the percent read multplied by the total number of pages but I typically only post the pages read when I've complete the book.

For challenges I don't worry about the accuracy too much because outside of the books I also read magazines, blogs and newspaper articles and don't even bother to count them at all.

If I'm trying to account for my daily hours spent on reading I just use the actual time except during the 6WC I gave myself one minute per page because a lot of the time I was reading too slow and rereading a lot.
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Re: How do you log reading made on a Kindle?

Postby rdearman » Mon Jan 21, 2019 2:00 pm

If you look at the Loc at the bottom left (tap it a couple of times to cycle through if it isn't there) then take that number and divide by 16.69 it will give you the approximate page number. This rule of thumb works for just about all Kindle books. If the publisher of the ebook enabled page numbers then the newer Kindles will tell you the page number.
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Re: How do you log reading made on a Kindle?

Postby Stefan » Tue Jan 22, 2019 1:29 pm

Ani wrote:You can fix the percentage problem by flipping to the last actual page of the book and noting the percentage. Sometimes it's as low as 86%.

Thanks. In lack of better ways, I'll start doing this.

rdearman wrote:If you look at the Loc at the bottom left (tap it a couple of times to cycle through if it isn't there) then take that number and divide by 16.69 it will give you the approximate page number. This rule of thumb works for just about all Kindle books. If the publisher of the ebook enabled page numbers then the newer Kindles will tell you the page number.

Do you happen to know what this is based on? I found one comment saying that it's based on bytes which might be a bit off if the book includes an image or two. I picked four random books and they were off by 10, 46, 119 and 144 pages compared with the paperback version.

On the other hand, one specific paperback edition is said to have either 116 or 128 pages depending on source..
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Re: How do you log reading made on a Kindle?

Postby rdearman » Tue Jan 22, 2019 7:22 pm

Someone did a check of a couple hundred books and that was the result. Has always been correct for me also.
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