Page count

[Marti talbott]

I hate the way Amazon's figures page counts. Standard is 250-300 words per page, so how many words is 300 pages exactly? No way to know? McShane's Bride (The Dotsero Train Wreck) is 77,869 words and Amazon says it's only 282 pages, which comes to 276 words per page. What I hate is not finding out until after I publish the book.

[KBoards.com]

[Speaker-To-Animals]

In my experience, this really isn't something ebook readers think about. (I've been on the kindle train since the Kindle 2 in 2009) I'll notice if something is long or short, but I know the ebook "pages" are nonsense.

[Simon Haynes]

I only recently spotted that one of my 70k word novels had been listed with a page count of about 150 (should have been closer to 290).  It's been 2 years, and it was the first in series so who knows what effect that had on sales.

Anyway, I bumped the 'edition number' in the kindle store, uploaded a new version of the novel, and also emailed support. It was fixed a week later.

Then I found out book 2 in a different series had the same problem. Fixed that one also, but it's worth checking. I think an ultra low (novella-level) page count and a price of 3.99 are not a good combination.

[ImaWriter]

I hate the way Amazon's figures page counts. Standard is 250-300 words per page, so how many words is 300 pages exactly? No way to know? McShane's Bride (The Dotsero Train Wreck) is 77,869 words and Amazon says it's only 282 pages, which comes to 276 words per page. What I hate is not finding out until after I publish the book.

This is confusing. Are you asking about ebook or print?

250 - 300 is a print standard. And IIRC from way back in the day when I was subbing to the trads, it's based on 12 pt. Times New Roman and double spaced. So that has nothing to do with the digital world. 

I'm guessing you mean ebooks, since you would know your page count when you formatted for print. There was a thread here years ago where we tried to figure out how Amazon counts Kindle pages. We all chipped in our word counts and page counts for various books and tried to at least find an average. The numbers were all over the place, and I don't think we ever pinned down an amount. Of course formatting has a huge impact, and Amazon changes things on a whim, so we could very likely never know.  And I'm pretty sure they have it stated somewhere that they do not advertise how they calculate page count. That would just be an invitation for people to try to scam it.

[Marti talbott]

This is confusing. Are you asking about ebook or print?

250 - 300 is a print standard. And IIRC from way back in the day when I was subbing to the trads, it's based on 12 pt. Times New Roman and double spaced. So that has nothing to do with the digital world. 

I'm guessing you mean ebooks, since you would know your page count when you formatted for print. There was a thread here years ago where we tried to figure out how Amazon counts Kindle pages. We all chipped in our word counts and page counts for various books and tried to at least find an average. The numbers were all over the place, and I don't think we ever pinned down an amount. Of course formatting has a huge impact, and Amazon changes things on a whim, so we could very likely never know.  And I'm pretty sure they have it stated somewhere that they do not advertise how they calculate page count. That would just be an invitation for people to try to scam it.

Thanks for the insight. I always thought Amazon takes the page count in the paperback and applies it to the ebook (eventually). Do you double space your books? Mine are 1 1/2. Would increasing it make the difference?

[Marti talbott]

I only recently spotted that one of my 70k word novels had been listed with a page count of about 150 (should have been closer to 290).  It's been 2 years, and it was the first in series so who knows what effect that had on sales.

Anyway, I bumped the 'edition number' in the kindle store, uploaded a new version of the novel, and also emailed support. It was fixed a week later.

Then I found out book 2 in a different series had the same problem. Fixed that one also, but it's worth checking. I think an ultra low (novella-level) page count and a price of 3.99 are not a good combination.

Do you double space your books? Would that make a difference?

[ImaWriter]

Thanks for the insight. I always thought Amazon takes the page count in the paperback and applies it to the ebook (eventually). Do you double space your books? Mine are 1 1/2. Would increasing it make the difference?

Increasing would make a difference but you could get your hand slapped for trying to manipulate your KNEP.  So, no. Without checking, I think my spacing is single with no space between paragraphs. (KDP guidelines say single spacing, but I've read that 1, 1.2, and 1.5 are all okay)

And I need to apologize. My mind was kinda wrapped around KNEP when I answered, not a simple page count. Our ebooks are eventually supposed to connect to the print page length. To date, mine have always been the exact number as the number that I format in Word and upload for print. Although it seems to be taking them longer and longer to do that, when it used to happen automatically within 7 days. I've had to email them and ask them to do it with the last 2 books.

[Simon Haynes]

Definitely no double-spacing.

It was only 2 of my 28+ novels that were so off.

Pretty sure I uploaded half a manuscript when I made the pre-order, and that page count stuck. Now, of course, you don't have to upload anything to do a preorder.

[alcyone]

I've emailed them, and my book still isn't fixed. And now my second novel I just published is wrong, too.

Novel #1 - 112K words. 389 print pages. KENP 562, but Kindle pages are listed as 277.
Novel #2 - 99K words. 341 print pages. KENP 502, but Kindle pages are listed as 255.

There is nothing unusual about either book in terms of formatting. They both have the standard front and back matter. The paperbacks automatically linked to the eBook without my having to do anything or ask. Why Amazon is claiming a Kindle "page" is ~400 words in my books is a total mystery to me. It doesn't make sense based on the print length, the word count, or the KENP number.

[Simon Haynes]

If you change the edition number on the details page and upload the ebook again the change might take. (I ended up including the first chapter from the next book as a sample in the back, which may have triggered the zon systems to do a recount.)

KENP is always way more than the actual page count.

[alcyone]

Thanks for the suggestion, Simon. I will give that a try and see if that fixes the issue.

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