I will use the example of fifty pages just for the convenience of this article.

You are going to print catalogs that you intend to be fifty pages long, and from this length, you have an important decision to make: how many products are you going to put in your catalog?

The more products you have the more variety you lend to your catalog. People like to have a lot of different things to choose from, and this also increases the chances of people finding something that will appeal to them. You do not want to leave out a product that could turn out to be a very popular thing. Every additional product you put in your catalogs is another chance at a sale.

But the more items you list the less room you have for each. All products need to have a description next to them, and the more you have the smaller these descriptions can be. This means a person buying the product will have fewer details to go off of, and have a more bare bones description of the product listing only the basics.

This also means each picture you use for the products is naturally going to be much smaller as well. After all the larger the picture is the more space it takes up, and if you want to have plenty of items in your catalog you cannot make the pictures too big.

Smaller pictures and shorter descriptions might end up harming your ability to make a sale, because people will be less encouraged to take interest in your products because they will not know as much about them.

Now I am sure you see the dilemma faced by every company that likes to print catalogs. You always have to find the right balance between the number of products you have and the amount of space you give to each product.

This is compounded by the fact that you also want to give more space to other products. Many catalogs devote the front few pages to more popular items, where the item is given more space on the page and a longer description. If you want to do the same you now have even fewer products you can use.

There is not a single right or wrong answer to this problem, and each company and each catalog will need to be looked at with these concerns in mind. You have to be certain that you are well aware of the right number of products needed to make your customers happy while maintaining a high quality for the descriptions and space provided for each product. If you can accomplish that than you will have a fine catalog on your hands.