Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Page Numbering Requests
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Does page numbering include intros, etc.?
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I use whatever the book says and that's it- if the extra blank pages are not numbered I don't count them along with anything else. The last # in the book is what I use.
I go with the last number in the book as long as that doesn't include adverts, excerpts from the next book in the series, etc. I don't remember if we've ever talked about what to do about intros, though. My instinct would be to use 457, Kelly, unless someone else ends up disagreeing with me.
Mod
You'll just have to stay on page 1 for a while. ;) Use the comment field to say "page xxiii of introduction", if you like.
I was wondering this myself - paperbacks do have a lot of extra pages with reviews and whatnot.
Given that the number of pages is used to compare against "I'm on page xxx of this book" it would make sense if this matched up with the last numbered page of the story. Do the figures on Amazon, etc, usually correspond to this, or to the number of physical sheets of paper (doubled, obviously)?
Phil, Often, the page numbers are incorrect. Any librarian can change the page number of books to the correct number, and any member (if they know about it) can ask for Goodreads librarians to change the page numbers for them. This is best done in the librarians group using the page numbering requests folder. Most librarians change the page number of their books as they read them, if the number listed is incorrect.
Phil, the numbers on Amazon seem to correspond with imaginary pages, because I've yet to come across numbers from Amazon that make any sense at all even if you count every physical sheet in a book. I think they just pick a number that sounds nice to them. I usually do a librarian edit when I have the actual book in my hand to fix what GR has imported from Amazon's info.
It might be a good idea to outline the accepted (Goodreads) rules about page numbering somewhere in the interests of consistency. Perhaps in the Librarian Manual? I would suggest keeping the rules simple and straightforward. This topic appears to come up once in a while and is generally confusing.
Mod
Does this hit all the rules?The number of pages in a book is meant to include all content including afterwords, notes, indexes, and glossaries. Advertisements for future books and preview chapters are not included in the page count. Introductory material paged using roman numerals is not included in the total page count.
What about a text book?For example, GoodReads' data base says that the Cambridge Latin Course, Unit 2, has 240 pages.
I have this book, as I am currently taking Latin.
Only 182 pages of it are actual text; the rest are appendices, a potted grammar, and a vocabulary list.
Would this one be properly listed as having 240 pages or 182?
Thanks, Lisa. Susanna, I added appendices to the description. But I'm not sure I've ever heard the term potted grammar.
Ha, one of my high school teachers would use the term. It's just a short grammar (very short, in this case).I've already mentioned the grammar, vocabulary list, etc. in my review of it, I think.
Mod
May have been, come to think of it.
Brooke wrote: "Phil, the numbers on Amazon seem to correspond with imaginary pages, because I've yet to come across numbers from Amazon that make any sense at all even if you count every physical sheet in a book. I think they just pick a number that sounds nice to them. I usually do a librarian edit when I have the actual book in my hand to fix what GR has imported from Amazon's info. "I wonder about Amazon sometimes. They usually post books on their website well before a book is released. I wonder if they're getting page "estimates" from the publisher or something.... maybe before the final editing has been completed?
I wonder if they're getting page "estimates" from the publisher or something.... maybe before the final editing has been completed? Maybe. But sometimes the numbers are so wildly incorrect that if this is what they're doing, they're receiving some very poor estimates.
Well, I meant that that might be what happens SOME of the time. When the numbers are wildly incorrect, I assume they use another method: pulling a number out of thin air, random number generator, etc.
I don't know if they were right but I remember a member mentioning at one point that Amazon went with the type of book: an adult novel, a children's novel, a children's picture book, a history book, a biography, etc. and assigned approximate numbers to them. They might have been (at least partially) right because I frequently come across identical incorrect numbers for different books of the same type.
I am interested in added the number of pages to some ebooks that I am editing, but there are no numbers on the pages. I understand where to stop counting, but where do I start the count? at the beginning of the story? at the title page? at the front cover?
Ebooks don't have page numbers because they re-paginate every time you change the resolution. So, unless you have a fixed page size ebook, like a pdf file, any number would be meaningless.
Kelly wrote: "I want to verify how the pages are counted before I make any page numbering changes. I'm reading the annotated Lolita which has 457 numbered pages, followed by a few pages of adverts for other Naba..."You need to include any prologue or introductory material in your page count. That would not include adverts but would include a chapter from the next book if that was included. I hope this helps
Mod
No, it would NOT.
About the amazon issue, for the books I added that were imported from amazon, when there was a page number, it was often one page less compared to the book in my hands, as if they don't count the last page (which isn't numbered generally). Weird.
mlady_rebecca wrote: "Does this hit all the rules?The number of pages in a book is meant to include all content including afterwords, notes, indexes, and glossaries. Advertisements for future books and preview chapter..."
Do blank pages between notes count? After the story ends with page no #, there are notes on maps, and many maps are given which are not numbered. Shouldn't these count too? And in the starting of the book, the index and a poem (related to the story) are counted in the Roman numerals, like xii. Now doesn't goodreads say to count the notes, afterwords and index. It's so confusing. What should I do? If these are to be counted, the book's pages should have 10 more pages.
Mod
As far as pages after the numbered pages, it depends on content. If the numbered pages stop at 385, then there is a blank page (both sides) and then 10 pages of real content (like maps) which are not numbered, that sounds like 397 to me. But usually if there are that many pages of content, the pages are numbered.
Thanks in advance!