General book search/sifting query: How to filter by length

[grmblfzzz]

Not sure if this is entirely appropriate here as not looking for a specific book, but rather information on resources to search for books in a specific (strangely elusive) way. That is, does anyone know of a db/site where you can search for books within a genre, and sort/filter them by the categories of either word count/pages or to show only books in series or extended universes?

I'd have assumed it was common as it's the first criteria I use when looking for new works, as I just have a strong preference for long content. Frustrating as the page/word count and series tags are common, just not useable to explicitly search for or sort by.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

There are some search resources listed on this thread

Book Search Resources

I'm surprised this hasn't been done before (unless it has and I can't find it) but it seems like a sensible idea to have a list of useful book searching resources. I'm going to kick off with the advanced search menu at the The Internet Speculative Fiction Database...

www.sffchronicles.com

Not sure any of them are a specific to your needs, though

 

[grmblfzzz]

Well, I appreciate the response, though I did search through all of those listed resources and couldn't find anything similar. The isfdb might have that functionality, as it definitely has the proper tags, but couldn't puzzle out any method of actually using them as searches or filters.

It's just strange to me that whenever I pose this to people they react like I'm some sort of monster demonstrating deranged or perverted tastes. It seems to me it's just similar to a preference for long format shows (like hbo series) vs movies.

 

[tinkerdan]

But then:
Here's an interesting blog.

The Longest SFF Novels of All Time

With the recent news that Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer is going to be very big indeed, I thought it'd be interesting to look at the lon...

thewertzone.blogspot.com

And:

List of longest novels - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And:

The Word Count of 175 Favorite Novels - Broke by Books

How long should your novel be? Stressed over your word count? In this resource, find the word count of 175 classic, bestseller, and award-winning books.

brokebybooks.com

library of congress

Search results for Book/Printed Material, 300k Words or More, Available Online

Search results 1 - 150 of 152096.

www.loc.gov

 

[Danny McG]

does anyone know of a db/site where you can search for books within a genre, and sort/filter them by the categories of either word count/pages

Smashwords maybe?

 

[tinkerdan]

Smashwords has built in buttons
under 20k
20k or more
50k or more
100k or more
Something like that--just four choices.

 

[grmblfzzz]

Hmm, interesting! I shall dive into the stuff posted by tinkerdan when I have more energy, but the smashwords filter is indeed helpful and much obliged for that. Though somewhat saddening in it's arbitrarily limiting it to those four choices, as if I recall correctly 100k words is about your average 300-350 page novel. So while it eliminates extra short, it's not exactly extra long.

Perfect example of what I was talking about though with the meta info being there on almost all these sites, just not having it filterable sadly.