Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

New librarian here and I just want to make sure I am doing things correctly. For Kindle books, what if the copy on my kindle has less pages than what Amazon says? For example, Amazon says a book is 250 pages, but my kindle and phone says it is only 242. Which one is the correct page count to use?

Thanks!

Hi Katelyn, congrats to your librarian status :)

Always the publisher's official page count for ebooks. When it comes to Kindles (ebooks with an ASIN) Goodreads consider Amazon to be the publisher, so we use the page count listed on the Amazon website. In your example case that would be 250 pages.

The page number on reading devices changes depending on model and screen size, so the number you see might be different from what I see for the same book.

annob wrote: "The page number on reading devices changes depending on model and screen size, so the number you see might be different from what I see for the same book."

This is true in some cases and not others. However, Goodreads policy is to use the published page count rather than the device page count because librarians cannot know when it changes and when it does not.

Thanks for the help!

Hello,

Is this true for Kindle books? According to what I see, in both Kindle device and Kindle App (phone, tablet and PC) the page number is constant, and does not change across devices/font size/style.

Seems to me that the rule of "publisher is right" is correct for other ebooks (e.g. libby/overdrive/readera/etc.), but for Kindle books if a user has the book in hand, it should override Amazon,

Can this rule be reconsidered?

Thanks.

Amazon is the source we use for page counts for all Kindle editions.

rivka wrote: "Amazon is the source we use for page counts for all Kindle editions."

I understand that that's the way it is, I'm not sure why doesn't a book in hand override it.

Because, despite claims to the contrary, for many Kindle editions (possibly not for all) the page count does vary with different devices and/or user settings.

Hi, I have a question about this.

I came across a book that had the incorrect page number listed.
Book in question: Real

However, when I went to change the page number, I saw that another librarian left this comment: Amazon lists book as having 207 pages but it actually ends at 184 pages. The remainder of the book is previews of other books.

Now, in the Librarian manual it says both of these things:

The number of pages in a book is meant to include all content except for advertisements and preview chapters for other books.

AND

If the publisher provides a specific page count, that number should be reflected in our book data.

So, what do we do when the 'publisher' provides factually incorrect data?

I believe for kindle books, we put exactly what amazon says.

Katelyn wrote: "I believe for kindle books, we put exactly what amazon says."

Correct. The only formats for which book-in-hand does not trump publisher/Amazon/etc. data are ebooks. User settings, precise model of ereader, and other variables can mean that the same book on your ereader and mine have different page counts. Therefore, for ebooks (including Kindle editions), the page number should come from the publisher. For Kindle editions, that means Amazon.