Same book different version has more pages. Why is this?

Question

A Game of Thrones
Pages 672 (UK Hardback), 694 (US Hardback), 804 (UK Paperback) 835 (US Paperback)

That's a pretty huge page difference. Why does one book have more pages than the other? Does the lower page count book have less of the story than the highest page count book?

Answer 1

Taking answer #1 we can add that perhaps it is a new edition. The author rewrote parts of it which makes it longer. He added new material. And perhaps the UK edition was a translation of a foreign book. The same with the US book. The second time around it could be a new translation that improves and adds new material to the book.

Answer 2

I'm with Turtles. If you'd like to see how this works, copy and paste a hundred pages into Word, and start changing the font and margins. You can make 10 pages appear or disappear in the blink of an eye. This is why publishers refer to the number of words in a book, never the number of pages.



A book which has had text removed is called "abridged"

Answer 3

I'm sure it is typesetting. Subtle differences like the space between lines and size of type and margin sizes can add up to a lot in a long book.