The lastest version of EPUB (3.1) has an optional spec (
http://www.idpf.org/epub/idx/) that might help with your idea. But, a reading agent has to support it (which they're not required) - and sometimes readers already have a 'search' function built in (so slightly duplicating the effort).
To your original issue:
Quote:
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If I turned this book into a reflowable epub, then the page numbers wouldn't make sense. So how do most epub authors handle this kind of situation?
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I don't recall if there's any "official" position on how to do this since, as you mention, the text is reflowwable and the idea of a 'page' falls apart. Amazon has their own schema on how to determine page numbers for reflowable content (I think it's based on amount of characters? No clue really). Other readers show a page number, but that's just based on the current font and screen size (so it'd dynamic and will change user to user).
Another quirky way I saw was an EPUB that used the Header/Footer support for EPUB to identify what amount content corresponded to the physical page of that book. Seems like a lot of work, and you still need a reading system that will pickup that info and display it - but again that's a page on the physical book. A user opening the same EPUB in a different reader that doesn't use that same technique, may see completely different page numbers (so any citation/location is kind of moot).
IMHO: This seems like a lot of work to apply a 'fixed' page number to something that's meant to be not-fixed. If you're really need some absolute definition of 'physical' location, just keep to a Fixed-Layout EPUB3 instead.