Page Numbers Shown

Showing the number of pages in a book on it's main page in a place easy to see would be helpful. Feel like I have to dig for that info for a new book to find out it's 900 pages and I don't have the time to read it. Would be super helpful and save time!

>1 wolfgang.smith:

Page numbering can vary from edition to edition, and since the main Work page includes all editions, I don't see how that could work well.

When you catalog a book, you can include the number of pages in your edition, and then it will show on the book details page.

Average page count could work.

Even average page count needs a lot of assumptions that not everyone will agree on. Should the front and back matter be included? If you're using number of pages as a physical description, perhaps a way of indicating how wide a book on a shelf is, you would absolutely want to know about the 150 pages of endnotes and the 25 pages in the index. If you're wanting to know how long a book is for reading, though, do you include the endnotes? only if they're substantive additions, rather than references? what about the acknowledgements? what about the anniversary edition introduction? What about the epub edition that doesn't have pages at all and can be read by scrolling?

Which then makes me wonder what the denominator is for the average - how would LT identify the number of variations to get to the average page count? The epub/digital edition could really do a spiders georg on the average, if it's particularly popular and entered in such a way that there are multiple variations rolled into the work.

I don't want to say that it's an impossible idea, but it's not really a simple one.

(oh! i just remembered a ER book i received ages ago! to complicate matters more: it was printed with a single, very wide page, accordion folded. You could turn the folded parts like pages, or spread it flat to read like a scroll. And then flip it over and read from the other direction on the opposite side for the same story from a different pov. Is that book 2 pages or 150 pages? each fold went unnumbered, so there isn't even an indicator from the author/publisher...)

When you read on an e-reader, the page count varies depending on how you have your font set, too.

Word count may be more useful for the purpose of determining too long to read, and dodges issues of differing font sizes, layouts, etc between different editions.

Questions about whether to count front matter, endnotes, and whatnot would remain, obviously.

Word count can differ a lot in different languages. Also in different translations into the same language.

oh dear, and I've just remembered the question that keeps linguists up at night: what is a word?

(I also rather like the botanist version: what is a tree? but that philosophical conundrum won't muddy the waters of this topic. I don't think. Probably.)

But if Amazon and GoodReads can do it, why can't we at LibraryThing? I feel like it is a very achievable feature to add.

Here is my thought process on how to do it:

Step 1: Grab the Data (Whichever is most reliable - I would lean towards Library of Congress for most works)
- WorldCat: Huge library catalog with page counts by ISBN. Free API caps at 1,000 requests/day; subscribers get more (up to 50,000/day).
- Ingram: Publisher data for trade books. Subscription-based, usually 5,000-10,000 requests/month depending on your deal.
- Library of Congress: Free, public API with page counts for U.S. books—80 requests/minute limit, no daily cap, so it’s practically limitless if we space it out.

Step 2: Store it
- Put it all in a database (ISBN, page count, source). Pull via APIs or bulk files (Ingram loves CSVs), and update monthly.

Step 3: Funnel It In
-Match ISBNs to our editions, add page counts, and show a median/range per work (e.g., ‘320 pages, 300-350 range’).

Feel like this is a pretty tangible project. Thoughts?

>9 wolfgang.smith:

Grab the Data

That's the problem. Which data? It's easy if there's only one edition of a work, and there are no introductions, endnotes, indices, etc. to worry about. But that's not the case for a not insignificant number of works.

Amazon does it by edition, and it appears that Goodreads does the same. But LT does not have an editions layer. If you want the number of pages in your copy, you can add it when you catalog the book.

>9 wolfgang.smith: But if Amazon and GoodReads can do it, why can't we at LibraryThing?

Um, we do? Or at least we can. If there is a page number value in your book record, it can percolate up to the "Your Book Information" box that shows on the work page. I believe the work page is what you mean by the "main page" in >1 wolfgang.smith:. If it isn't showing there already (I don't remember which are the default data shown), click the "Customize" cog in the upper right corner of the "Your Book Information" box and use the checkboxes to select "Pages."

Absent your own book record, there is no way for the work page to choose a page number value among the various editions and translations comprehended by a work, as pointed out by >2 lilithcat: and >10 lilithcat:. A work doesn't have pages; it is an abstract identity hypostasized from the many physical instances of a book.

More things which add to the page count, in some editions only - excerpts from subsequent novel in the series, or even a completely unrelated book by the same publisher ( I really hate these). They can be several % of the total.

>9 wolfgang.smith: Amazon is terrible at page counts, though.

About 95% of the books i read on kindle, I have to manually mark as "read" because the total pages include additional material - several pages of author acknowledgements, advertising for other books from the publisher, indices or bibliographies... And it seems you want a work page count to know how long a book is. A great non-fiction book I recently read had more than twice as many pages of endnotes, bibliography, and index than the core book!

Match ISBNs to our editions, add page counts, and show a median/range per work (e.g., ‘320 pages, 300-350 range’).

What about the many millions of works without ISBNs or ASINs? or folks who don't include those when adding books? Books that aren't even held by the LOC/WorldCat/Ingram for step 1?

Anyway, we do have a physical description field for pages already. It isn't extracted to the work page because as >10 lilithcat: says, pages is edition-layer data, and highly variable, and says nothing about the work.

Amazon and Goodreads don't have work layers, only editions. I think Goodreads doesn't even have copies? (Afaict, you can only add one copy per edition, so if you have two otherwise identical books, but one is signed by the author, there isn't a way to add them both as unique books in your library.) There is a lot more control on the db side about book data than we have here on LT.

I really do understand why you ask for this, @wolfgang.smith, but trying to get a consensus about nearly anything is like trying to herd a bunch of toddlers at a park. Or like trying to keep us all in one place at a bookstore. Getting everyone to agree on what counts for page numbers and what data sources to use, and then for future members to not shout about how it's wrong and needs to change... really it's just as well to let it be.

And anyway, if you're thinking of reading a book, you won't be acquiring it on LT - you'll go to the online shop where the page count of the specific edition is listed, or you'll be at a bookstore or library and can flip through to see where the end material begins.

We could have the work page collate all the page number counts from all the book records within that work, and display/tabulate/graph them in some form, averages, etc. A bit like the measurements page in our user Charts & Graphs. It could do that with all the physical properties even. Obviously only as a way to display what the community has recorded for their copies, and not an authoritative measure, but could be somewhat useful.

>9 wolfgang.smith: They don't. They show the page count for the specific edition. You can achieve the same by showing it on the work page among your data AND in catalogue by including the 'page' column in one of your views. The only thing you can't do on LT is see the number of pages for books you haven't catalogued. Even that you can do with a click on amazon, goodreads or google books 'Quick Link' in the right side bar. It will not show you any median value, but the value they have, which is for the specific edition you choose.

You will get a lot of ratty data too I fear.

>14 Nevov: I like this idea, it's not an end all be all of definitive page numbers of the book, it's a quick metric to glance at while deciding whether to read a book or not, and a lot of the time for me if it's like 500+ pages for a book I topic I was hoping to read about in a couple days it makes the decision easier of when to read it. I feel that everyone wants to know the length of a book before reading and feel this metric on the main page of the books will help people make a quick decision of when they will find the time to read it and organize their library accordingly. Without the metric it has to be outsourced to Amazon or GoodReads to get an idea and the user leaves the site before adding it to their library. Or they add it, see the book is 900 pages, then have to delete it. Just makes the user experience a bit smoother and seamless I feel and would be a useful feature

Noone is arguing that it won't be useful.

The problem is that it is not really feasible - if you have the book in your catalog, you have the data (as pointed out a few times).

But if you do not and go to a work page, do you want to see the German paperback, the Bulgarian hardcover which was printed with point 8 font because they tried to save paper, the English mass market paperback or the English Large Print pages? That's the challenge here - in LT these 3 versions are one entry and we do not have separate data per ISBN (or per language or per edition or any other way you want to slice and dice it). Even if LT invests in the infrastructure and the subscriptions to somehow get pages for all ISBNs (your estimates above on monthly traffic is what they will burn through in a day IF they only service clicks into work pages and batching it won't be as trivial as you think at the volume of books we have here), when you look at a work page, there are hundreds (and thousands for some of them) in there. So what do you expect? A median number (this will get skewed depending on what had been cataloged and how many)? An average one? Same problem. We really do not have an easy way to get things shown for anything between a book and a work (except for titles and other things in CK where we can show it per language IF that language has a CK section).

You need to be looking at a specific edition for "number of pages" to become meaningful....

>17 wolfgang.smith:

I feel that everyone wants to know the length of a book before reading

No, not everyone.

>19 lilithcat: And even if we do, we can see that from the book itself.

>17 wolfgang.smith: it's a quick metric to glance at while deciding whether to read a book or not, and a lot of the time for me if it's like 500+ pages for a book I topic I was hoping to read about in a couple days it makes the decision easier of when to read it..

Okay, but again, what if it's a 500 page book, but 200 pages are end notes, bibliography, and index. Does that matter to you? I just looked up a recent nonfiction I read. Talking Back has 263 numbered pages, but the end material starts at page 186 or so. I recorded both page counts when adding the book, because they both have meaning to me.

Which one should show on the work page, or would they be summed?

Sometimes, when adding books, I included blank pages in the count, but not consistently. Sure, get an average of some sort, but it can be 10+ pages, however big the register is when printing and binding.

I think what might help is a table of contents in the CK, but even that can be tricky because of the lack of edition layer.

Oh wait. The solution for @wolfgang.smith: look up someone's individual book record from the work page, and check if it's the edition you want and if there's a page count listed.

It's a few more steps, but totally feasible if you don't want to leave the LT site.

I really appreciate the thoughtful push-back and creative ideas everyone’s brought to this thread—it’s clear we all care about making LibraryThing as useful as possible. I want to address some of the key points and refine my proposal, because I still believe there’s a feasible way to make page counts more accessible on the work page without breaking the bank or the system.

To >10 lilithcat: lilithcat, >11 paradoxosalpha: paradoxosalpha, and >18 AnnieMod: AnnieMod: You’re absolutely right that page counts are edition-specific, and LT’s work-layer structure doesn’t naturally lend itself to a single, authoritative number. I get that Amazon and Goodreads operate at the edition level, while LT’s strength is its work-level abstraction. My own cataloged books already show page counts in “Your Book Information” (thanks for the tip on customizing that, >11 paradoxosalpha:!), but I’m thinking about the discovery phase—when I’m browsing a work I don’t own yet and want a quick sense of its scope before digging deeper.

To >4 keristars: keristars, >6 AndreasJ: AndreasJ, >13 keristars: keristars, and >21 keristars: keristars: The variability in what “counts” as a page—endnotes, front matter, accordion-folded experimental editions (love that example!)—is a real challenge. I’ll admit my initial “median/range” idea oversimplified things. A 500-page book with 200 pages of endnotes is a very different beast from a 500-page narrative, and I’d want to know that before committing. Word count might dodge some of these issues (>6 AndreasJ: AndreasJ), but >7 MarthaJeanne: MarthaJeanne’s point about translation variance shows it’s not a silver bullet either.

Here’s where I’m landing, inspired by >14 Nevov: Nevov’s suggestion: what if the work page showed a community-driven snapshot of page counts, pulled from what users have already entered in their book records? Not an “official” number, but a dynamic, opt-in display—say, a small box under “Your Book Information” titled “Community Page Counts.” It could list a range (e.g., “250–600 pages across 47 editions”) or even a simple frequency breakdown (e.g., “30% of copies: 200–300 pages; 50%: 300–400 pages; 20%: 400+ pages”), based on what’s cataloged. No need for LT to subscribe to expensive APIs or overhaul the database—just aggregate what’s already there. Users could click through to see specific edition details if they want (nod to >22 keristars: keristars’ workaround).

This wouldn’t solve every edge case—>12 reading_fox: reading_fox’s point about sneaky publisher excerpts or >16 al.vick: al.vick’s warning about ratty data could still muddy things—but it’d give a quick, at-a-glance sense of scale without leaving the site. For me, that’s the goal: a smoother experience deciding whether a work fits my reading window. If it’s 900 pages, I’ll save it for a long vacation; if it’s 250, it’s next week’s read. I don’t need perfection—just a ballpark.

>19 lilithcat: lilithcat and >20 MarthaJeanne: MarthaJeanne: Fair enough—not everyone cares about page counts upfront, and physical copies speak for themselves once you’ve got them. This wouldn’t be for everyone, just an optional tool for those of us who find it handy. >13 keristars: keristars is spot-on that consensus here is like herding toddlers in a bookstore (ha!), but I think a lightweight, user-sourced approach sidesteps that by not forcing a One True Number.

What do you all think—could a “Community Page Counts” snapshot work without over-complicating things?

Something like the new MDS/DDC information on the Classification page? I can see how that could be helpful.

One thing that has long bugged me is how the Members/Recently Added By on a work page links to the member profile instead of their book details.

I'm sure there must be a reason for it, but it would be nice if there was a way to get to any member's book details from the Work's Community section.

We certainly don't want harassment of others for how they catalogued their book, and this would remove the current, not insignificant friction. But it can be nice to know if someone has added a book as wishlist or read-and-hated (or what version they have, or the page count) without going to the member's library to find it.

If there were a summary of page counts, on one of the work sub-pages, I would hope to also get those direct links to books, somehow.

"Someone entered the length in hours and minutes! I didn't know an audio version was available! ...... oh, I see, because it's in the original Polish, not English."

You still have to look at an actual copy. Amazon tells me that Entangled Life has 368 pages in either paperback or hard cover. This agrees with the number on the last page of the book in my hands. However, that page is part of the index. The last page of the epilogue is 252. That means that the 'page count' includes 116 pages that I didn't have to read. For Gottes Bilder those numbers are 318 and 293. Only 25 pages I won't read. Is this a shorter book or a longer one?

This is an interesting discussion. (Personally, I always read notes and bibliography, so those would be part of the 'actionable' page count.)

>27 konallis: If the author wants me to read the notes, they will be at least on the page in the same font size as the text. In fact, if they are really important they would be part of the text.

The big problem I find in bibliographies is that what I would really like is a list of books that tell me how the field has developed since the book was published.

And somehow I doubt that even you are going to read the 28 pages of index. Don't get me wrong. A good detailed index is a wonderful thing. I wish more books had them, but I doubt that anybody just reads it.

This is just another case of how difficult it is to say 'how many pages'.

>28 MarthaJeanne:

Authors often have little control over the typography of their notes, and whether they appear as footnotes or endnotes. My usual assumption is that if the author didn't want their notes read, they wouldn't write them. But in practice, I find that the notes in some works are limited to citations and arcane points easily skipped. I have to read a few notes to know, though.

To address >1 wolfgang.smith:'s post.

I understand his question. I don't necessarily share the concerns about providing "exact" page numbers. Before I address that, however, I would like to mention a few exceptions. This applies, as mentioned, to the various language editions. But also to special editions, such as illustrated, annotated, or deluxe editions. Within standard prints, whether hardcover or paperback, the order of magnitude remains the same. It's perfectly sufficient for me to answer the question of whether a book is too thick or too thin. Because whether a book is 350 or 400 pages thick is usually not decisive for whether I won't read it for that reason. In a bookstore or library, I look at a book spine to determine that.

Estimating reading progress within a book is a bit different. When reading novels, it's usually easy. A few pages at the beginning and a few pages at the end —if you ignore publishers' unspeakable tendency to advertise future books— make it fairly easy to see how far along I've been in reading. It becomes more difficult when reading nonfiction books or books with various appendices. With paperbooks, it's easy to get an overview.

Since around 2004, when I was still reading (paper) books, I've been tracking the pages I read. I note the page numbers of the first and last pages of text. If the book includes forewords, afterwords, and appendices, these are added to the number of pages read. For footnotes, endnotes, references, indexes, indexes, etc., I estimate the number of pages read and add them to the total. Over the years, this has given me a sufficiently accurate overview of the number of pages read.

Since 2014, I've mainly been reading e-books on eReaders in ePub format. This makes it difficult to track page numbers.

Unfortunately, the calculation of page numbers depends on the different brands and models. I also take a lot of notes, which I export, sometimes edit, and save. I've noticed that the page numbers change by up to two pages while reading and saving for export. I find these inaccuracies tolerable.
So, if the page references are at the book level and not at the work level, they don't constitute a reason for me not to address >1 wolfgang.smith:'s post.

For me, it would be much more crucial and important to be able to indicate whether the pages are "paper" or "e-pages" in the physical summaries. Additionally, recording the storage size would be an important piece of information for digital media.

(Translated from German using Google Translate)

>28 MarthaJeanne: Reading a whole index would indeed be a bit much. Unless it's a book like the bad verse anthology The Stuffed Owl, which has a joke index.

The same text, with no additional material, can vary greatly between editions. John Warner, in today's Biblioracle column: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/03/15/biblioracle-large-print-books/ compared the UK and US editions of Orbital, by Samantha Harvey and discovered that "at the same paperback format size, the U.K. edition had 144 pages, while the U.S. edition numbered 224 pages."

>32 lilithcat: Oh, nice example! Thanks for sharing it. And the column itself is food for thought, reflecting on those awful, cheap, school editions of classics with the muddy print on pocket-size dark pages, and the next step up with larger pages for more margin and space between lines.

John Warner (1) writes some very thoughtful columns for the Trib. He also has a Substack that I like a lot: https://biblioracle.substack.com/