Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Policies & Practices
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Adding FanFiction Question
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2) As much as possible following the usual template. (https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...) Obviously, they won't have an ISBN or ASIN, but they should have most of the rest, including a URL available to the general public. Author names should be capitalized, and if there are different versions, please use the one on the cover(s), if applicable.
3) Word count can be added to the description. Page count is harder; what are you using to determine pages from word count?
Hello rivka, thank you for explaining the posting process and how to move my post and bump it up, in the future I will make sure to abide by this policy. I have some follow up clarifying questions (sorry I will try to be brief lol).1) Just to clarify, based on your post, if a fanfiction is a “one shot” (one chapter) those are not considered valid for book entry correct? But fanfiction that are book length are. Correct? Can a fanfiction that is a one shot be seen as a novella? Novellas tend to be short. Or can it be labeled as NAB Not a Book? Fanfiction from places like Archive of Our Own and Fanfciton.net do not require sign in to read (anyone can read from the site) but you do have to sign in to post your stories as an author much like Goodreads requires sign in for posting content but not for viewing and using the site.
2) Authors on Fanfiction sites typically do not use real names. They have pen names like: ambell540happy and Happy45James3s (these are fake pen name examples) and are usually case sensitive. Is this acceptable for the author’s name? Goodreads has many popular fanfiction already on it with the pen names as the author name like these examples. (Not all authors want their identities known so they use pen names).
3) For page count there is a formula that I used when using data entry for goodreads before goodreads changed its adding data policy to only Goodreads Librarians. Typically a novel has anywhere from 300-475 words per page. The average is about 350 per page so the formula for this would be: Divide your word count by 350 words per page.
Example: 45,000 words / 350 words per page = 129 pages.
There are also word converters online but they can be over detailed based on the type of font, the size of the font, the size of the page, etc. The above formula is an average based on a book that is 5.5ʺ × 8.5ʺ (tends to be the average sized book) and 12 type font and an average word count of 350 words per page.
Sorry for the long post. I appreciate your time in explaining these policies. I am trying to read the manual so I can better understand the process for posting proper information on books (I was unaware of this manual in the past). I am not a Librarian but hope to be in the future. Unfortunately when it comes to fanfiction it is a bit of a grey area and the manual does not dive into this subject as thoroughly as others (as far as I have read so far). Hence me asking a lot of questions in this post. Again thank you for your time! =)
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Only novel-length fanfics meet Goodreads criteria for inclusion. This has been true for as long as fanfic has been explicitly allowed, but until recently anyone could add items to the database, so items that did not meet our criteria were added. Items that are already in the database and do not belong there are sometimes marked as NOT A BOOK rather than being completely deleted. But we do not add items that don't meet our criteria -- as NAB or anything else.
ℛ a ℂ ℎ ℯ ℓ ♥️ wrote: "Fanfiction from places like Archive of Our Own and Fanfciton.net do not require sign in to read (anyone can read from the site) but you do have to sign in to post your stories as an author much like Goodreads requires sign in for posting content but not for viewing and using the site."
That's fine. It needs to be possible to read the fanfic without logging in or subscribing, etc. Requirements for posting fics are not relevant to this question.
ℛ a ℂ ℎ ℯ ℓ ♥️ wrote: "Authors on Fanfiction sites typically do not use real names. They have pen names like: ambell540happy and Happy45James3s (these are fake pen name examples) and are usually case sensitive. Is this acceptable for the author’s name?"
My concern is not whether the author uses a pen-name -- that is fine. However, sometimes the author uses one name as their account name, and another on their covers. If that is the case, please use the name on the covers. As for the example pen-names you gave, the second one is fine as is. The former should be listed as Ambell540happy.
I am well aware of the many methods that can be used to convert word counts to page counts. The one you suggest is fine, but please specify in each request that is the method you have used. (e.g. 45,000 words; 129 pages (using 350 words/page as conversion factor)) That way the Goodreads Librarian who fulfills you request can leave a Librarian Note or change comment reflecting that source in the log.
(For the record, I do read fanfic and long ago even wrote some. I am moderately well educated on the current state of the genre.)
Thanks for the answers to my questions! After the changes to Goodreads this month I got a little worried about the fanfiction side of Goodreads. Sorry if I came off a bit over explanatory. I can be very wordy in messages sometimes when I don't understand something or have a hard time knowing how to get my thoughts across. I will make sure to follow the information you have mentioned.I am glad you answered my post. It makes me feel a bit validated to know I was talking to someone who also likes fanfiction. Not everyone gets it and sometimes they can judge those of us who read or write it by saying things like "oh that's not a book or that's not real reading." So I am thankful you understand the value and fun in fanfction and took the time to answer this post. (The over explaining was my anxiety showing through, I was nervous to post these questions and possibly be judged for liking fanfiction).
P.S. If you have any good recommendations feel free to share! I love Reylo and Dramione ;) But am open to other fandoms too!
I tried looking up Book Length References and thought I would share some of what I found here.Book Length References I Used to Question Length
https://www.fanfiction.net/community/... I found this community page of "Novel Length Harry Potter Fanfiction" on Fanfiction.net that seems to require that fanfiction be more than 40,000 words long and COMPLETE to qualify as Novel Length.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/344... According to this page on Archive of Our Own they are comparing fanfiction length to various novels to show how many fanfiction they have that are longer than novels starting with a book reference that is 38,000 Words long.
https://aaronmullins.com/2020/12/08/a... Reference # 3: This site says "over 50,000 words can be considered a novel".
thewritelife.com/how-many-words-in-a-... Book Length Reference # 4: This site says "For most publishers, a book is “novel-length” when it’s between 50,000 and 110,000 words."
I have gone by the former head librarian's comments which I have found here in one example(However, some opinions may differ)
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Generally the cutoff is accepted to be about 40,000 words. For a book with 250 words per page, that's 160 pages. (Some put the cutoff at 30,000 words. That would be 120 pages at 250 words/page.)
But 250 words/page is an average, and many books have significantly more -- or less. Unfortunately, most books do not list their word count, and the KB count (which is listed for the Kindle editions) appears to have absolutely no correlation with page count.
Corinne wrote: "In June 2023 staff showed interest in establishing the length of novellas here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...Anything above that number would be a valid length for fanfiction..."
I got a little turned around following the discussion in that link, but it sounded like they might have been implying that books over 35,000 words count as a novella so does that mean fanfictions over that length count or did I just get lost in the conversation?
Corinne wrote: "they haven't chosen to clarify yet. 50-79K is in question IMO. anything 80K is obvious. I was mostly just noting it as a *cheer from the crowd* that staff knows they need to establish some length..."
Thank you.
Hello due to the new rules regarding adding books and only having Goodreads Librarians adding them I have a few questions about Fanfiction. I read a lot of it and wanted to know if:
1) Can new Fanfiction stories still be added to Goodreads by you if I request it?
2) If so what information do you need from someone asking you to add the story?
3) And lastly, Fanfiction does not usually have pages but it does have word count that can be converted into pages. Are you able to post the pages count for Fanfiction based on their word count (I like seeing it contribute to my overall reading year statistics).
Thank you for your time! =)