Missing part - The 5th Wave

[Karellen]

I purchased The 5th Wave by Richard Yancey as a pbook a few days ago - ISBN 9780141345819

Flipping through the pbook to get a feel for the structure, I notice the book is divided into 14 parts with each part having a series of chapters. The parts being the story arc's from a different characters perspective.

14 Parts according to the numbering, but I can only find 13. So Part 10 is missing from the pbook.
I snort to myself, "idiot publishers/printers how can you not notice".

Hop onto Amazon to read a sample to see how much of the story is missing... Well the Sample also has Part 10 missing. You can see that in the TOC of the sample... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BLVO8JQ

Over to archive.org to check a scanned copy, yep the 2 versions there also have Part 10 missing.

No amount of googling can I discover why Part 10 is missing.

Does anybody know?

[Sirtel]

I have an edition from 2018, with no missing parts, but only 13 parts overall, not 14. I looked and saw that the 10th part in my edition was the 11th part in earlier editions. The number of chapters remains the same. I'm guessing it's a typo in earlier editions (XI instead of X) that no one noticed.

[Karellen]

Thanks @Sirtel Peace of mind that none of the story is missing.

Then I repeat my earlier snort of derision - idiot publishers/printers (and ebook editors) how can you not notice

[haertig]

Could be the publisher took their queue from elevator installers. They are prone to skipping the thirteenth floor. Many tall buildings - especially hotels and apartments - go straight from the 12th floor to the 14th floor. Many people don't notice this, but check the next time you are in a tall building's elevator. Was there some happening in the book, foreshadowing or something, that might tie in to skipping the tenth chapter? An intentional, but subtle wink to something in the plot relating to the number 10?

I have not read the book myself. I did see the movie, but don't remember anything about it, so I must not have been into it. Certainly not enough to remember anything about "10".

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by haertig

Was there some happening in the book, foreshadowing or something, that might tie in to skipping the tenth chapter? An intentional, but subtle wink to something in the plot relating to the number 10?

I've just finished reading the book about 20 minutes ago, and I found it enjoyable. Nice writing style, easy to read and engaging.

I was holding off posting my above question until I at least past that section of the book as I wondered the same - some revelation about "10" or "X". But no, nothing to indicate such. No break, no questions, just a continual story arc during the main action scene.

As Sirtel has confirmed, a later edition does not have this discrepancy so I can only believe it is a single error that made its way through the whole publishing chain. - Author, editor(s), graphic artist, publisher, printer.

[ownedbycats]

Not this specific book, but I've also had an issue with a missing chapter: a Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster imprint) digitization of an older printed book accidentally repeated the same chapter twice, overwriting the second one. I had to track down a scanned copy in order to read the missing chapter.

(Pocket Book digitizations also have various other issues—in one book, every em-dash went missing, leading to words runnning together or dangling sentence endings.)

Originally Posted by Karellen

Then I repeat my earlier snort of derision - idiot publishers/printers (and ebook editors) how can you not notice

Yup.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by haertig

Could be the publisher took their queue from elevator installers. They are prone to skipping the thirteenth floor. Many tall buildings - especially hotels and apartments - go straight from the 12th floor to the 14th floor. Many people don't notice this, but check the next time you are in a tall building's elevator.

I have worked in a building like that.
Avoiding Superstitious numbers seems quite common, even nowadays.

A few years back, while installing Grocery Cash registers, we had to work around no checkstand #4 (Since the register # did not allow skipping, we put that on the customer service desk (no lane sign) )

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Not this specific book, but I've also had an issue with a missing chapter: a Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster imprint) digitization of an older printed book accidentally repeated the same chapter twice, overwriting the second one. I had to track down a scanned copy in order to read the missing chapter.

(Pocket Book digitizations also have various other issues—in one book, every em-dash went missing, leading to words runnning together or dangling sentence endings.)

I once bought an eBook direct from S&S and the CSS was quite a mess. It was actually broken. I tried to fond someway to let S&S know so I could return it but I was unable to. Fortunately, I was able to fix the CSS.

[ownedbycats]

Out of curiosity, was it a digitization of an older printed book?

[Quoth]

The evil or lucky number or colour or whatever seems to vary by culture.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The evil or lucky number or colour or whatever seems to vary by culture.

I checked 'evil number' on Wikipedia and got a quite unexpected result

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Out of curiosity, was it a digitization of an older printed book?

Maybe. All I can remember is that it is a Star Trek eBook.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I checked 'evil number' on Wikipedia and got a quite unexpected result

So all non-negative integers are either evil or odious?

I wonder what Charles Dodgson would have made of that.

[DNSB]

Laugh?