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)

Counting (or not) preceding pages.

By preceding pages, I mean things like the title page, copyright page, maybe a contents page, etc. In particular, I'm interested to know if limitation pages, either at the beginning or at the end, are counted. Are any of these these counted?

I'm new to entering data into isfdb so I'm sorry if this is the wrong place for these questions. If so, please direct me to the correct spot.

Looking at various existing entries, because page counts seem to usually start at the first page of the story, I would have said "no", though it seems like limitation pages are important content that should be recognized. However, I recently was looking at my copy of Julian May's "The Golden Torc". It has both introductory material with Roman numerals and some unnumbered maps and such at the end giving it a page count xxv+381+[6], which I find confusing. It is confusing because the first page that actually shows a Roman numeral is numbered ix, which is a Contents page. And counting backwards, I find that page i is actually the half-title page. So for this title, EVERY page is counted from the half-title on EXCEPT the limitation page, verso and recto, immediately preceding the half-title. The next three books in the series do the same. So is this a vagary of this particular series or should I regularly be counting all material from the half-title (or a preceding limitation page) on? Mike 21:07, 8 June 2020 (EDT)