Page Numbering and Author Notes

[[ A ]]

I have been reading the Dresden Files novels by Jim Butcher recently, and I noticed an odd thing.

Mr. Butcher has included an Author Note at the end of the last 3 books I've read in the series (including White Night, which I just finished).

This Author Note is identical in all 3 novels, and it an advertisement for his fantasy series, Codex Alera. Essentially it says something like: Hi everyone, I've always wanted to write an epic fantasy series, so now I have! Go check it out!

(I can provide a excerpt if necessary.)

I know that author notes are normally included in the page count, but it seems in this case this "note" is merely an ad for another book series-- not at all relevant to the current novel or series I just read.

How should I deal with this? :)

I would like to remove the Author Note from the page count for these books, but I wanted to check here first and see what the consensus might be.

[mlady_rebecca]

Personally, I'd treat it as an ad for another book and exclude it from the page count.

[Charles]

this is an interesting question.
along those lines, how should book club editions be treated, since the added pages are NOT actually anything to do with the story?

[Elizabeth]

Charles wrote: "this is an interesting question.
along those lines, how should book club editions be treated, since the added pages are NOT actually anything to do with the story?"

I'm inclined to include those bits in page count, because they're a part of that edition which readers are likely to read.

[Vicky]

This is answered in the librarian manual, but it's seems to be down at the moment. Odd. Oh, found it cached in my history, here's the quote:

The number of pages should include the relevant text of the book -- glossaries, appendices, author's notes, etc should be included in the page count if they are labeled with regular numbers, but not if they are labeled by Roman Numerals. Ads, book previews, author biographies, and other such unrelated text should NOT be included in the page count.

I this case, I would not count the author note. However, the content at the end of a Book Club edition is related text, so it should be included.

[This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For]

Generally, I think it's just too much effort to nitpick over this. If the pages are numbered, include them. If they're not numbered, don't bother. Ads, biographies and such are generally not numbered so simply going with the last numbered page is almost always adequate for the purpose.

[rivka, Librarian Moderator]

This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "Ads, biographies and such are generally not numbered so simply going with the last numbered page is almost always adequate for the purpose."

This is very definitely not consistent with my experience. Previews for other books are almost always numbered, for example.

And I see no reason an author bio should not be included, numbered or no.

[[ A ]]

Agreed rivka-- most of the book chapter previews I see are numbered as well.


Thanks for the input, everyone. :)