Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion

Note: nothing has changed from last year and this has been copied and pasted. Please let me know if there is anything you notice that has not been mentioned in the rules.

1. These may not be popular with everybody but we decided that rather than open it up to discussion we're just going to roll with them. Sorry to be so autocratic but sometimes it's easier from an admin perspective to just make decisions.

2. 10 month season, starting on January 1st and ending on October 31st. Only books started on/after January 1st can be counted for the challenge. The two months off at the end of the year are because we need an offseason and the holidays work out best for everybody.

3. Page count top 5 English versions unless you're actually reading the non-English version. The rationale is there were some 300K word count books counting less than some a third of that size. It's imperfect but unless we had a word count for every book out there there isn't a better way.

4. Point system:
Audio: 1:1*
Read: 1.25/1 = 5/4
Graphic 1/4

*For books listed on Goodreads with only Audio format (no page count available) - 30 pages/hr, or a page every 2 minutes is the average book narration rate at 1x speed
Example: 8-hour book - 240 pages

BR: 1/3 bonus
For Buddy Reads points to count, you can start reading the book one week before the BR start date or join in within 2 weeks after start date. These bonus points are to encourage discussion so you may only get the BR bonus if you participate in the discussion, not just simply reading at the same time.

Challenge: 1/10 bonus
For challenge points to count, you can use any challenge that you have a tracker set up in this group.

5. New people joining 100 post minimum.

6. For people signing up later than the initial draft, once you are added to the challenge, you may include points starting from the day you signed up for the challenge.

Announcements will be posted whenever necessary.

Note: Old threads will be archived to avoid confusion. You can still find them in the Archives [General].

Update: additional information regarding audio-only books has been added to the initial post.

Jenna wrote: "Update: additional information regarding audio-only books has been added to the initial post."

May I know the basis of the 30-page per hour formula?

Yes, Iain worked out that the average audiobook narrator reads about one page every 2 minutes with 1x narration speed. We understand that narrators do read at different speeds, but it's the best calculation we can do if there is no print version available to input the page numbers.

Jenna wrote: "Yes, Iain worked out that the average audiobook narrator reads about one page every 2 minutes with 1x narration speed. We understand that narrators do read at different speeds, but it's the best ca..."

Thanks, Jenna. My other group has 37 pages per hour rule but we don't really have a solid basis other than a member's recommendation. Good to have this group's reference :)

Pages per minute/hour actually vary alot... but 30/hr is a decent average, especially for this group, and easy for people to calculate on partial hours...

The main variance in my opinion is natural narrator speed and dialogue vs description density... fantasy tends to be slower and romance and mysteries with tons of dialogue are faster... memoirs can be the fastest... the other factor is whether the paper book includes pictures or extra short stories, but those require more research to find out...

I actually measure pages/hr in my 2020 & 2021 spreadsheets... as a result Soo’s 2021 sheet also tracks it if you want to take a look... it’s past the points columns and recolors my audiobook column red for under 30/hr, green for over 40/hr, and yellow for 30-40/hr...

can you carry over your unfinished reads from last year? or maybe it's just the page points/challenge points for this year that would count, not the book itself? sorry if this question has already been asked in the previous challenges lol

Maria wrote: "can you carry over your unfinished reads from last year? or maybe it's just the page points/challenge points for this year that would count, not the book itself? sorry if this question has already ..."

Only books started on/after January 1st count for anything. It's just to stop anyone from stacking up their shelf at the end of December and then getting a ton of points at the beginning of the year.

Rule #2 updated to make things more clear.

Alright, thanks, Jenna!

Jenna wrote: "Maria wrote: "can you carry over your unfinished reads from last year? or maybe it's just the page points/challenge points for this year that would count, not the book itself? sorry if this questio..."

Reminds me of old World of Warcraft strategies from first expansions... stack 25 quests in questlog, and turn in on expansion launch day to jumpstart climb to the new level cap... also why the devs kept artificially inflating the XP/level with each expansion, so that that didn't work very well anymore...

Random tangent over :D

I know it probably says this somewhere, but what do we do for an ebook that only has one edition but no pages listed? Super short story so I won't get many points, but hey it counts.

The Autumn Mist

It was part of the fantasy faction anthology which had 350 pages total, if that helps. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Are you reading the kindle version? Does it have the weirdly large page count? I bet there’s a conversion formula somewhere....

I had just the short story alone I must have gotten from one of the Kickstarters and never read until now. It had no page numbers just locations. super fast read. I have one other on my list that only has one version with no pages too.

So I googled it, it says location/20=page number

20 sounds reasonable - that’ll work!

I forget - what are the rules for an audiobook only additions to the list or do they not count as they have no book counterpart?

1 page every 2 minutes of audio... only audiobooks, not podcasts/etc (altho some books were made into audiobooks using podcasts... usually fanmade ones)

Timelord Iain wrote: "1 page every 2 minutes of audio... only audiobooks, not podcasts/etc (altho some books were made into audiobooks using podcasts... usually fanmade ones)"

Thanks Iain - I knew you'd know that answer :)

Rob wrote: "Timelord Iain wrote: "1 page every 2 minutes of audio... only audiobooks, not podcasts/etc (altho some books were made into audiobooks using podcasts... usually fanmade ones)"

Thanks Iain - I knew..."

Yea... there are Audible Originals, podcasts of short stories in genre magazines, Big Finish production audioplays linked to Doctor Who, etc, and I dunno what else...

I listened to Escape from Virtual Island which is an audible original written by 30-Rock/SNL crew. Nothing great, pretty stupid in many ways actually, but fun.