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Page numbers - or some accurate location method - are not optional.
I am currently reading a book with well over 3000 pages - and when I turn it on it always goes to a page around 2700, irrespective of where I turned it off. It is a monumental pain to have to find the place again (for some reason the bookmarks don't work, either) and a running page number display would be a real help.
Incidentally the justifications [A] that adequate pagination uses too much power and processing, and [B] that too few readers require it, do not hold water. It is all very well to be understanding about the costs and complications of developing an ebook to a price with limited resources but if the product does not do what the customer expects it will not sell. This was the problem with a number of Clive Sinclair's world-changing innovations - they were the first, but their defects were such that as soon as there was any competition the Sinclair device was so obviously inferior that they lost out quickly.
Readers of paper books expect them to have page numbers to simplify navigation. If migration from dead tree to ebook is to be successful the new medium must offer all the same conveniences and more, anything missing is a scourge for the backs of the ebook promoters. And if some ebooks have the feature the ones that do not will lose out.
If real pages (one screenful) are too really much trouble, it is likely that an "epage" of 512 words would be acceptable.
James
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