I don't much care about chapters. Mine tend to be long (8,000 to 11,000 words in my main novel) but each chapter contains several scenes. For some reason, I'd much rather have a few long chapters in a novel than many short chapters. Short chapters seem lazy to me. As far as reading is concerned, I don't care if I stop in the middle of a chapter. I don't feel any particular need to finish a chapter before I put the book down. It seems a bit neurotic to have that need, frankly. I don't know why people can't pause their reading wherever they want to.
Mine fluctuate wildly from 1 page to 27 pages. ( they always have ) I don't pay much attention first draft. I know dialogues will be turned into exposition, scenes will be cut, side characters expanded. Also I'm not doing a specific genre so the expectations aren't as ridged. I'm not going to monkey with my story to create too much to grab my reader. I write what I want to read, and I like to keep it realistic ( as much as I can for some on my fantasy worlds) and if it coincides with something exciting so be it. But I'm not into the 24 ( tv series ) style of hyper-conflict - after a while it feels very contrived and undermining.
As my experience has been, chapters are not so much about length but more about scene and scenario. Your story is of course one big scenarios, chapters do a good job breaking up individual scenes. they are also good tools for breaking up a long scene building suspense, normally at a turning point. If you go back and read books you have read already and pay attention to the chapter lay out, I think you will see this pattern form. One author who uses chapters as story building tools is Jim Butcher in the Dresden Files. another is J.R.R. Tolkien in Lord of the Rings. I would not worry so much about your readers, but about the flow of your tale. If you write a well crafted story your readers will not even notice the length of one chapter compared to another.
I'm trying to keep mine to a minimum of 4 pages, with no upper limit. If I find a chapter is growing too large, I'll split it into two or more chapters if I feel it is necessary. Currently I'm wrestling with a chapter which has come to out to be only 2 pages long, so it could be merged with another chapter.
