Pages compared to normal book

[janerol]

Hi Everyone,

just bought a sony reader PRS-300, can anyone explain why are ebooks shorter in number of pages than the regular book


Regards


John

[spideog]

I would have expected you to fine the ebook had more pages than a paper book. The number of pages in an ebook is not a fixed number, change the screen size the font size, the font used etc and the number of pages will be different.

Ignore the page numbers as they mean next to nothing for ebooks.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by spideog

I would have expected you to fine the ebook had more pages than a paper book. The number of pages in an ebook is not a fixed number, change the screen size the font size, the font used etc and the number of pages will be different.

Ignore the page numbers as they mean next to nothing for ebooks.

I thought PRS-300 was kind of based on Adobe's RMSDK. And for other readers based on that SDK the total page number is constant when changing font size or other things.

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by tompe

I thought PRS-300 was kind of based on Adobe's RMSDK. And for other readers based on that SDK the total page number is constant when changing font size or other things.

Yup. And I'm finding that the page count for ePubs can really vary depending on how the original book was printed. I have one ePub that has about the same number of pages as the trade paperback, and another which is about half the page count of the mass market paperback, and hardcover.

The page count for ePubs seems to be figured out based on how big the HTML files are. If you have more formatting in the ePub HTML itself (instead of CSS), it will have more pages than one with less inline formatting.

[spideog]

Which all makes the page numbers in ebooks just a random number plucked out of the air really.

[Dusty]

Just for an example...

The layout I find acceptable on the 300 gives me 24 lines of text at 9 words per line.
The same book in papeback give me 32 lines at 10 words per line.
Good enough fpor me

[mores]

Originally Posted by spideog

Which all makes the page numbers in ebooks just a random number plucked out of the air really.

Not really.
Total number of lines / lines per page = number of pages.
It's a good way to see, how far you've been reading.

Of course it can't be used for reference, since every reader (person as well as device) will get a different number depending on their preferences.

[spideog]

Agreed, it is useful for gauging how far through the book you are, but cannot be used for comparing to paper books, or even other ebooks, as to how long they may actually be in relation to each other.

[kezza]

Most of my ePub books are also shorter than the paper versions. I suspect it's just as simple as words per page differences. ePub books have a set number of pages that are spread out over multiple page turns on any given device. On my nook and PRS-505 it's usually 2-3 page turns per ePub page, depending on the font size I'm using. This way, page #3 is the same across all devices, which I find preferable to the old method, which paginated differently for each device and/or font size. I suspect the ePub versions have more text per page than their paper counterparts, so we wind up with slightly "shorter" versions on our Readers than on our bookshelves, even though the number of words is identical.

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by mores

Of course it can't be used for reference, since every reader (person as well as device) will get a different number depending on their preferences.

This is actually exactly what Adobe's page count for ePub seeks to solve (as does the Kindle's location number).

As Adobe's page count for a particular ePub is the same on any device using the SDK, it /can/ be used as a reference as the page count is fixed as long as the ePub's content doesn't change.

[janerol]

Thanks everybody for your replies, really helpful


Regards


John

[HarryT]

Just for reference, a "page" in an ePub book is a count of 1k (1024) bytes in the compressed file.

[brainycat]

I wish the PRS-600 firmware would give up on page numbers. There's the page count at the bottom of the screen, then those mildly annoying page numbers to the right of the text. I feel they're irrelevant to digital formats. I wish they'd replace them with a percentage of the file size, and even if they count the CSS towards the total, it'd be more meaningful to me than page numbers.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by brainycat

I wish the PRS-600 firmware would give up on page numbers. There's the page count at the bottom of the screen, then those mildly annoying page numbers to the right of the text. I feel they're irrelevant to digital formats. I wish they'd replace them with a percentage of the file size, and even if they count the CSS towards the total, it'd be more meaningful to me than page numbers.

A percentage of the files size is meaningless if you do not know the file size. And it is hard to jump to a specific percentage to get to a specific page.

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by brainycat

I wish the PRS-600 firmware would give up on page numbers. There's the page count at the bottom of the screen, then those mildly annoying page numbers to the right of the text. I feel they're irrelevant to digital formats. I wish they'd replace them with a percentage of the file size, and even if they count the CSS towards the total, it'd be more meaningful to me than page numbers.

The text on the side is going away it looks like. Who knows if the 600 will get a firmware update, but the 900 doesn't use the page index numbers on the right side anymore, and leaves it simply to the page number on the bottom (which will also now say things like: 280-281 of 505, if the displayed page crosses a page boundary).

Page numbers tend to be fairly arbitrary already (because the size of the print page and the font used is), so I don't see anything wrong in continuing the tradition, especially since an ePub should show up with the same page count on multiple devices for the most part. It at least lets me cite an ePub (much like the Kindle locations) and have good expectations that someone trying to find the cited material won't go nuts trying to find the text.