Template talk:PublicationFields:Pages

I am confused by this but maybe it would be better to explain why the "pages" field data is being collected. Are we trying to determine an accurate story length in pages or is the goal so that someone can look at their publication vs. ISFDB's records to see if they seem to be about the same thing? I have noticed that ISFDB displays this as "123pp" but am not sure what the technical definition of "pp" is for ISFDB - I believe it's short for "printed pages" (but may well be an abbreviation for a Latin word) and that a publisher's "pp" seems to include every single sheet of paper in a book excluding the wrappers/covers.

The following text was just added:

• It is fairly common for the last page of text in a book to have a different graphic layout which may not include a page number. The "last printed page number" rule would then use a page number before the end of the work. In these cases, count forward to the end of the text and use that as the last page number.

I believe you are trying to say that if it's apparent that a story ends on an unnumbered page that you would count forwards from the last numbered page to the end of the story to get the page count. There are a few questions that maybe would not be questions if I better understood ISFDB’s goals for collecting “Pages.”.

• What should someone do if the story ends and the following page is unnumbered but also has an illustration that's related to the story? I ran into this recently and decided to count this as a page.
• What should someone do if there are unnumbered pages that contain postscripts, about the author, ordering forms for other books, etc.? I normally don't count these.
• What should someone do if the page numbering continues after the story for an index? I have been counting these as part of the story and if the last page(s) of the index are unnumbered I count forwards from the last numbered page.
• What should someone do if the page numbering continues into material that seems unrelated to the story such as "about the author?" I have been using the last numbered page that seems to be part of the story though this one is subjective.
• What should someone do if the story ends and then is followed by excerpts for the author's upcoming books? I can’t recall a case where the page numbered continued forwards but I have not been counting these but will have to look back at the rules to see if I should enter the excepts into ISFDB. Marc Kupper 19:52, 19 Dec 2006 (CST)

I would like to hear from Al what his intentions were for the field, but I think the most value comes from identifying the length of the work. I hadn't really thought about it this way till you posed the question, but I think what a browser wants to know when they ask "Is this a 300 page book?" is how long the text they will read is. Conventionally one does not subtract leading non-text numbered pages, but I think the last page that can reasonably be considered part of the text is the last page number we enter. "Reasonably" should be debated on the pub biblio page, or possibly on the author biblio page section for that title for titles where the issue will arise in every publication. Mike Christie (talk) 22:18, 19 Dec 2006 (CST)