iBook page length error

[Scrawny]

I've notice the page length indicated for an ebook on iBook Store doesn't come anywhere near the number of pages in Microsoft Word.

For example, Apple reports “Bubble Trouble†as having a print length of 4 pages. Yet the book is 18 full 8.5X11 inch pages. So how come 18 MSWord print pages become 4 ebook print pages?

If I don’t count the front matter – the copyright stuff and introduction – and don’t count the black and white pictures for coloring at the end of the ebook, that still leaves 10 full 8.5X11 inch pages for the "Bubble Trouble" story itself.

Apple says the print length of “Icky Foods Make Me Sick“ is 3 pages. Microsoft Word page length is 18 pages. That conversion is worse than Bubble Trouble!

Apple says the print length of “Nestor Nose†is 4 pages. Microsoft Word page print length is 28 pages. Yikes!!!

Does anyone know why the print length on iBooks is much less than the print length in MSWord?

 

[twerppoet]

These are all picture books, right? iTunes is probably computing page length based solely on the amount of text. That's the problem with this kind of automatic stuff. There is always something you don't think of. Short of the book publisher including the estimate, instead of it being automatically computed, I don't see how they will fix it. At least not with some easy tweak.

Even then any page count estimate depends heavily on text size, page size, and margins. All things that you can change in iBooks and most other eBook readers.

It's a problem all ebook providers are trying to deal with. How long is a book when the reader can resize just about anything?

Microsoft Word on the other hand actually lays things out and then counts the pages. It's not a reader, it's designed to print stuff, so of course it knows how many pages are displayed, and happily changes that count every time you change a format settings.