Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Policies & Practices
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Bonus story to be included in page count?
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I know you know the manual, but The number of pages in a book is meant to include all content except for advertisements and preview chapters for other books. Included end material may include acknowledgments, afterwords, appendices, bibliographies, glossaries, indexes, notes, and suggested discussion questions. From the above, only advertisements and preview chapters are to be excluded. All other added material is to be included in the page count.
Does this story appear separately elsewhere? Perhaps the book is wrongly combined. (And I just throw that out as a possibility, not as a certainty!)
Nowhere on the outside or inside of the book is it made clear that it contains a bonus story, except on page 383.The story was published separately as a Kindle edition, with twice as many pages, so the bonus story may actually be a preview.
Page counts between digital editions and print editions often vary widely.
In the copy I have in my hands, a fifth impression, the page count for Bird Box including acknowledgements is 381, which is the page count currently listed.
On p. 383-409 a bonus short story is included ("keep reading for a bonus short story"). As far as I can tell (haven't read it yet), it is not a preview, but a complete story entitled "Ghastle and Yule" (although that story's Kindle edition is listed as having 54 pages: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2..., so maybe it is a preview after all?)
A complicating factor is that the page count for this book has been changed back and forth several times, but never to 409, so perhaps there are other impressions/editions with this ISBN that include different or extra bonus materials.
Should I just leave the page count at 381?
ETA If it is a preview, I know it should not be included. But generally speaking, if books contain (complete) bonus stories, should they be included in the page count?