[ChrisChillin]

Kali Yuga,

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Keep in mind that Kindle apps don't handle pagination the same way as some other apps. "Locations" are not flexible and don't change based on things like margins, font size or screen size...

Indeed. That would be okay for academic work if access to Kindles was fairly universal; i.e., if all my dissertation examiners either owned one or could go to their university library and find that a) the library had Kindles to rent and b) the Kindles are loaded with the sources I cited.

I can see how flexible pagination is a disaster for academic purposes. But how is citing an ebook edition with a fixed location index be any different than citing a book that was issued in, say, two paper formats? Or in multiple editions?

Not different in principle, although it does add another layer of complication. If I cite a particular edition of a book that has had several releases, the examiner could go between libraries until he or she finds the edition I cited. If I cite a Kindle edition, under the current locations-only structure the examiner would have to acquire both a Kindle and the Kindle edition of the book to easily follow the citation.

After all, it's not like each and every paper edition of a book is going to have the exact same pagination.

See what I said above. Academic works typically are released either just as hard or paperbacks or, if both, the pagination remains the same. E.g., if I cite Dale Allison's Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and its Interpreters, the page number would be the same for the hardcover and the paperback. If there were a Kindle edition of this book available, and that was the version I cited, then the notation would be non-standardized and confusing. With the introduction of page numbers to the Kindle file, that problem goes away.

And if it's an article, you're probably going to work off of a PDF anyway, where pagination will be maintained.

Indeed. I haven't printed a journal article in months!

A better solution is for ebook apps to give the reader a choice between a fixed location (e.g. Kindle) or flexible pagination, rather than index it off of paper editions.

I'm not convinced. Not everyone is going to have access to the digital edition. Not everyone will want the digital edition. You have to ensure coherence between the physical and the digital versions of the book for ebooks to work in academic settings.