Paged number data in ebooks and which ereaders support them.

[apastuszak]

I know at one point, Amazon added support for page number data to the Kindle, so that people in book clubs that were reading along with people that had physical copies knew what page number they were on.

Are there other ereaders that support this? Is there a way to add page number data to ePubs?

[Sirtel]

Epubs usually support Adobe page numbers. But those are different from paper copy numbers.

And of course different paper editions have different page numbers. A hardcover and a mass market paperback always have pretty wildly different page count.

[j.p.s]

There have been many threads about ebook page numbers, kindle page numbers, and EPUB page numbers. Do an advanced search:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/search.php
Search by tag for the tags:
page number
page numbering
page numbers

TL;DR: Yes. Yes.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Epubs usually support Adobe page numbers. But those are different from paper copy numbers.

And of course different paper editions have different page numbers. A hardcover and a mass market paperback always have pretty wildly different page count.

There is more than one page numbering scheme for EPUBs.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Epubs usually support Adobe page numbers. But those are different from paper copy numbers.

And of course different paper editions have different page numbers. A hardcover and a mass market paperback always have pretty wildly different page count.

So page numbers, as a point of reference, are really meaningless.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

So page numbers, as a point of reference, are really meaningless.

Of course.

I do use the page count plugin in Calibre, to give me a custom count so that I know how long the book is (yes, word count is more accurate, but I still like to see a customized page count). For other purposes it's really pointless.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

So page numbers, as a point of reference, are really meaningless.

Page numbers supplied by amazon correspond to a specific printed edition specified by ISBN. Some of these books have those page numbers encoded into the EPUB submitted to amazon by the publisher. Some retail EPUB books have the same encodings. So not complettely meaningless. Whether they are useful, useless, or somewhere in between depends on whoever is reading the book on which reading platform.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Page numbers supplied by amazon correspond to a specific printed edition specified by ISBN. Some of these books have those page numbers encoded into the EPUB submitted to amazon by the publisher. Some retail EPUB books have the same encodings. So not complettely meaningless. Whether they are useful, useless, or somewhere in between depends on whoever is reading the book on which reading platform.

Well, my thinking here is, if you're in a book club, and people are reading a mix of Kindle, paperback, trade paperback and hardback, they're all going to have different page numbers.

So trying to reference things by page number is going to be hard. I know trade paperbacks and hardbacks are supposed to have the same page numbers, but they don't have to.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

So trying to reference things by page number is going to be hard. I know trade paperbacks and hardbacks are supposed to have the same page numbers, but they don't have to.

I just compared 4 books that I have in trade paperback and hardcover. The page count is different between all 4 pairs. A few more days and I wouldn't have had them around to compare since I'm whittling down my pbook collection.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

trying to reference things by page number is going to be hard.

Yes. So?

[ownedbycats]

From the thread for the Count Pages Calibre plugin:

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

why are we arguing about the accuracy of a page-count in a reflowable format, lol

Originally Posted by DNSB

It's a more modern version of arguing about the nature of the Trinity.

And that pretty sums up my opinion of it, lol. Count Pages is good for getting a good comparison of the lengths (though images, etc can mess it up) but not much else.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Yes. So?

My wife was in a book club. When they talk about things that happened in the book. they refer to page numbers. Clearly that's not the way to go.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

From the thread for the Count Pages Calibre plugin:





And that pretty sums up my opinion of it, lol. Count Pages is good for getting a good comparison of the lengths (though images, etc can mess it up) but not much else.

It's not about knowing where YOU are in a book. It's being able to tell SOMEONE ELSE where you are in a book. In both book clubs and online discussions, people will frequently mention a page number and then a quote from the book.

Lately, I have seen people mention a chapter and then a page number to make it easier to hunt down the section someone is talking about.

When Amazon first added the page number feature, people in book clubs made a big deal about this being important for book clubs.

[PeterT]

A book study I'm aware of was giving out page numbers; I suggested that maybe chapter numbers might be more appropriate only to learn that the author did NOT number the chapters, and in fact they appear in the TOC as the name of the main character in the chapter; ie: Jess, Theo, Warfield's Jarret and of course there are multiple chapters with the same title.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

It's not about knowing where YOU are in a book. It's being able to tell SOMEONE ELSE where you are in a book. In both book clubs and online discussions, people will frequently mention a page number and then a quote from the book.

Lately, I have seen people mention a chapter and then a page number to make it easier to hunt down the section someone is talking about.

When Amazon first added the page number feature, people in book clubs made a big deal about this being important for book clubs.

Yes, and some books don't have chapters even by name only.
There is a way of doing the page numbers of the paper edition in an ebook that work for most formats, any device and and any app. Though it can be annoying if you don't want page numbers visible in the text, however it can still work even if the page number text is invisible.