Crazy page lengths

[LDB]

Looking at one of today's free books, At War With Women. It shows page length 448 pages. That's a few. The same book, free on Kindle, shows page length of 278 pages. It's 60% more pages on Kobo!?!?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by LDB

Looking at one of today's free books, At War With Women. It shows page length 448 pages. That's a few. The same book, free on Kindle, shows page length of 278 pages. It's 60% more pages on Kobo!?!?

Perhaps you might have noticed that (at least on Amazon.ca), the page count shows as Print length:274 pages and Page numbers source ISBN:1501767747 while the Kobo page count is basically what you would see when reading the ebook when synced from Kobo as a kepub so 448 pages. Downloading to ADE 4.51 as an epub says 332 pages and running Adobe's synthetic page number algorithm says 334 pages.

And people wonder why I break out in near hysterical laughter any time someone stands up and starts raving about true page numbers in a reflowable ebook.

OTOH, all 4 versions shows ~122K words and looking at the pagelist, all of them show 267 text pages and a variable # of pages labelled with iii,iv,...ix,x,xii.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Perhaps you might have noticed that (at least on Amazon.ca), the page count shows as Print length:274 pages and Page numbers source ISBN:1501767747 while the Kobo page count is basically what you would see when reading the ebook when synced from Kobo as a kepub so 448 pages. Downloading to ADE 4.51 as an epub says 332 pages and running Adobe's synthetic page number algorithm says 334 pages.

And people wonder why I break out in near hysterical laughter any time someone stands up and starts raving about true page numbers in a reflowable ebook.

OTOH, all 4 versions shows ~122K words and looking at the pagelist, all of them show 267 text pages and a variable # of pages labelled with iii,iv,...ix,x,xii.

Page numbers shown on the store's website are rubbish. Just ignore them as they are meaningless. The only external page numbers that make any sense are ADE page numbers that you can get from the Count Pages plugin. But for Kindle eBooks, you first have to convert to ePub to get the count.

[Quoth]

Only word count is a useful comparison. I've had a few paper books wiith same content and different page count and numbers.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Only word count is a useful comparison. I've had a few paper books wiith same content and different page count and numbers.

You cannot compare pBooks to eBooks for page count. ADE page counts is the most consistent type of page count we have for eBooks. It's not perfect, but for the majority of eBooks, ADE page numbers is a good indication of size of a book.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Only word count is a useful comparison. I've had a few paper books wiith same content and different page count and numbers.

Eh. There's Hop on Pop and there's Heidegger.

I'm with Jon; ADE was the most useful standard out there. It still works on epubs but I was sorry when kepubs changed pages to reflect screens, so that the number of pages changed with every change in font size. But kepubs are better for nonfiction, so there I am.

[Sirtel]

Personally I don't like ADE numbers. I find kepub 1 screen = 1 page more to my liking, because I never change font size/line spacing/margins, once they have been set initially on a new device. But I find my custom Calibre-generated numbers (based on characters per page) the most useful for judging book length.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Personally I don't like ADE numbers. I find kepub 1 screen = 1 page more to my liking, because I never change font size/line spacing/margins, once they have been set initially on a new device. But I find my custom Calibre-generated numbers (based on characters per page) the most useful for judging book length.

But KePub is not 1 screen - 1 page. There's some bug that makes it not so.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But KePub is not 1 screen - 1 page. There's some bug that makes it not so.

It's close enough. A few pages more or less makes no difference to me. Still, I'd like to display my Calibre numbers instead while reading; as this is not possible, I disable page numbers entirely and only use the progress bar. The calibre count is in the book details for overall length.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

Eh. There's Hop on Pop and there's Heidegger.

I know that there are different ways of counting words, but it's more meaningful for the length of a novel than pages and the standard metric.

I've used word count before ebooks existed.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'm with Jon; ADE was the most useful standard out there. It still works on epubs but I was sorry when kepubs changed pages to reflect screens, so that the number of pages changed with every change in font size. But kepubs are better for nonfiction, so there I am.

I agree with all that, except I have no non-fiction kpubs and very few epub non-fiction (books on writing and bibles!). Most are PDFs.

[Karellen]

I ignore page numbers. They are completely meaningless these days. Even for pbooks it can be misleading, with different editions of the same novel having different page numbers depending on line spacing, font size, book format, images, margin sizes, paper thickness and who knows what other tricks printers used to make the book look bigger or smaller depending on their market.

Word count is the simplest and most reliable indicator of a book length. Not sure why members don't use it more.

And it would be nice if readers maybe displayed word count progress instead of these BS faux page counts that mean nothing.

I tag my books according to this...

Short Story: Under 7,500 words
Novelettes: 7,500–17,500 words
Novella: 17,500 - 40,000 words
Novel: 40,000 - 120,000 words
Epic: over 120,000 words

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Karellen

And it would be nice if readers maybe displayed word count progress instead of these BS faux page counts that mean nothing.

Page numbers based on word/character count are just as valid. True, Kobos don't display any custom page numbers, which is a pity.

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Page numbers based on word/character count are just as valid. True, Kobos don't display any custom page numbers, which is a pity.

I struggle to understand why it is so hard for vendors to show accurate page counts on an ereader.

And by page counts I mean "screen pages" not some made up page count with a vague connection to a pbook.

The screen size is fixed and known. The xhtml page for that chapter is known. Why is it so hard to calculate how many screen flips to view that entire chapter, instead of the "screen flip 3 times to increase page number" method.

My experience with the Libra 2 is that the longer the chapter, the more screen flips to increase page number. The shorter the chapter, and pages are skipped - you suddenly jump from 1 of 3 to 3 of 3, with page 2 not existing.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Karellen

I struggle to understand why it is so hard for vendors to show accurate page counts on an ereader.

And by page counts I mean "screen pages" not some made up page count with a vague connection to a pbook.

The screen size is fixed and known. The xhtml page for that chapter is known. Why is it so hard to calculate how many screen flips to view that entire chapter, instead of the "screen flip 3 times to increase page number" method.

My experience with the Libra 2 is that the longer the chapter, the more screen flips to increase page number. The shorter the chapter, and pages are skipped - you suddenly jump from 1 of 3 to 3 of 3, with page 2 not existing.

Bu the number of screen flips depends on the size of your font, line spacing, margins and so on. It's not a fixed number.

I've not paid any attention to page numbers while reading, I have them disabled, so I have no idea how they behave.