Fanqie Reads vs All-Time Reads: What Fanqie's Numbers Mean

Every Fanqie book here carries three numbers: Reads, Score and Shelves. Reads is the one people ask about most, because it looks like it should be simple and it isn't. Fanqie reports two read counts, and for the same book they can be hundreds of times apart.

So here's what each number is, and which one to sort by.

Two read counts, not one

Fanqie gives a book a current read count and a lifetime read count.

The lifetime one is the big number. Every read the book has had, from launch day to now. It only goes up.

The current one tracks recent readership. Fanqie doesn't say exactly what window it covers, so read it as "how much is this being read right now" rather than as a precise figure. It rises and falls with the feed, and when a book stops getting pushed it can vanish completely.

How far apart they are, from a random sample of Fanqie books:

• Nearly every book has a lifetime count. Only about two thirds have a current one.
• The median book has a lifetime count in the low thousands and, when it has one at all, a current count in the dozens.
• The top one percent of books have lifetime counts well over a million.
• For a book that has both, the lifetime figure is typically well over a hundred times the current one.

Neither number is wrong. They answer different questions.

Why a finished hit sinks in the default sort

Here's the catch. About a third of Fanqie books have a lifetime count and no current count at all, and that includes a lot of finished books: roughly one completed book in four. A novel wraps up, the feed stops pushing it, its current count lapses, and in a list sorted by current reads it drops below books nobody has heard of.

So the default order on the Fanqie catalogue, which is Reads (the current count), is a good "what's hot" view and a bad "what's good" view. It will never show you the book everyone was reading last year.

When to sort by all-time reads

All-time reads is the fix. It ranks by the lifetime count, so the books at the top are the ones that got big and stayed big. Pick it from the sort menu and the Reads column switches to the lifetime figure, labelled "All time", so the numbers on screen match the order you asked for.

The top of that list is what you'd expect if you follow Fanqie at all. 我在精神病院学斩神 (Slay the Gods) and 十日终焉 (The End of Ten Days) both have more than a hundred million lifetime reads. 我不是戏神 (I Am Not the God of Drama), by the same author as the first one, is next at about 75 million.

It gets more useful once you combine it with a filter:

• Completed books by all-time reads: finished books only, most read first. The best list on the site if you want something you can binge start to finish.
• Modern romance by all-time reads: Fanqie's biggest category, ranked by staying power.
• Infinite Flow by all-time reads: any tag works the same way.

When the current count is the right one

Keep the default when you want what's moving right now: new books that are catching on, or a check on whether something you're reading is still pulling readers. Most Read on the rankings is the same idea as a chart.

And a big lifetime number next to a tiny current one isn't a warning sign. Usually the book just finished, or peaked a while back.

Score

Fanqie's score runs from 0 to 10 and comes from readers. It shows up on about a third of Fanqie books here, and it's lumpy. About a third of scored books sit at exactly 5.8. Another third sit between 8 and 9, and only around 7% of scored books reach 9 or above.

When that many books share one exact score, the score isn't telling them apart, and the gap between an 8.4 and an 8.7 means even less. Use score to break a tie between books that already look good on reads, not as the main sort.

Shelves

Shelves is how many readers keep the book on their bookshelf in the app. Fanqie only reports it for a minority of books, about one in seven in our sample, so most rows show a dash there. A dash means Fanqie didn't give a number, not that nobody shelved the book.

Don't compare Fanqie reads with Qidian votes

Short version: a Fanqie read is free, and a Qidian monthly vote costs a paying reader something. A million of one is not a million of the other. Compare Fanqie books with Fanqie books. How Qidian's numbers work is written up here.

Quick recipes

• Something finished and proven: completed, by all-time reads
• What's hot right now: the default Fanqie catalogue, or Most Read
• A trope, ranked by staying power: pick a tag in the filters, then sort by all-time reads
• The platform itself: Fanqie novels explained