Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Just wanted to confirm what to do with page numbering. I've recently become a librarian and started editing. I notice that the number of pages is often different on the site from the numbered pages in the book.

Can I just check that we ignore pages without numbers and pages with Roman numerals and, if there's a query, we go with the number of pages in the book.

A couple of examples I've seen recently:

Ronan Fanning - Fatal Path 9780571297405 Goodreads 448p / book 423p
Stephen Clarke - Dirty Bertie 9780099574323 Goodreads 400p / book 385p

Thanks

You might want to re-read this section of the manual.

https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/2...

In particular, the paragraph:

Books already in the database often already have page numbers, and these are occasionally incorrect. These can be corrected, but only if you have the exact book with a matching ISBN, or by using WorldCat or another site with reliable page numbering.

As you can see, the book in hand trumps what is in Goodreads. Usually these incorrect page counts come from an import where the publisher has provided an estimated a page count rather than the actual page count.

Pages without numbers are not ignored. If they contain info that belongs to the book (f.e. last page of text, index, etc.), they must be counted. Only pages to be ignored are pages containing excerpts or adverts for other books.

Many thanks to you both for the comments. Very helpful. Could I just check about prefaces, introductions and lists of contents & illustrations which often aren't included in the numbered pages and are given Roman numerals. The manual says:

'Introductory material paged using roman numerals is not included in the total page count'.

The books I mentioned in my first post have 21 and 13 pages in Roman numerals which include lists of contents and illustrations and a chronology (Fanning) and a list of contents, a map and a preface (Clarke). The other pages of both books are taken up with the title page, dedication, quotations and publishers information. All these are in addition to the numbered pages of the book I quoted in my first post.

Which, if any, of this should I include?

Anything in Roman numerals at the beginning of the book is ignored. What counts is the last numbered page in the book, plus the pages after that which contain text belonging to the book.

So if the last numbered page is 423, but:
- the next page contains the end of the chapter, the correct page count is 424.
- is followed by 10 unnumbered pages containing the index, the correct page count is 433.
- it contains adverts for other books by the author, as do the 3 preceding pages, the correct page count is 419.

Many thanks. That's really helpful.