Correct Page Numbers in Kindle?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

>So, for a novel, probably never. For a research book, they'll take a hard look at it.

I can't think of any other reason for page numbers, other than to cite the page in a note.

People reading a novel on a Kindle generally don't know the author's name. (Ask the lady sitting next to you on the plane or train!) They may not even know the TITLE, though it's on every "page" of a Kindle edition. Why would they have the slightest interest in PAGE NUMBERS?

The title is not on every page/screen, except in very specific devices/software. It's certainly not on my Voyage, PPW, Android Samsung Note 9 K4Droid, and I don't think it's actually displayed on my Fire 10, either.

(Not 100% sure on that last one, it might be. Actually, I just checked--it does show up on the F10.) But not most of my reading devices.

Hitch

[Quoth]

No title on my PW3. I have it displaying Loc and % on bottom edge. Changes by tapping bottom right. I thought it used to be a menu?

Edit:
Also I thought it used to have line with bumps to show chapters?

Ah, it is, but only if you have a book open, via READING tab on
[Aa] PAGE DISPLAY V
Font & Page Settings >

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No title on my PW3. I have it displaying Loc and % on bottom edge. Changes by tapping bottom right. I thought it used to be a menu?

Yes, still is--tap the top, then click the Page Display, and the options for that are in that menu. :-)

Edit:
Also I thought it used to have line with bumps to show chapters?

Snookums, you are dating us! Yes, I remember that too but I haven't seen that for a WHILE now.

Ah, it is, but only if you have a book open, via READING tab on
[Aa] PAGE DISPLAY V
Font & Page Settings >

Right!

Hitch

[Quoth]

I read my first ebooks on my laptop because the first ever eink reader hadn't been released and not being a Road Warrior / Sales and Filofax was never used I never bought a Palm PDA. At least not till a couple of weeks ago. I've tried Mobi, ereader and Tibr on it and two formats of ebooks. It makes even my oldest phones look very high resolution. No page numbers or title on the page

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

I can't think of any other reason for page numbers, other than to cite the page in a note.

Accessibility (especially navigation).

As one example, see the ebookcraft 2019 talk, "The User's Perspective: Accessibility Features in Action".

The talk is given by a blind user, and he explains/shows problems with inaccessible documents (like PDFs that are just scanned images, missing alt text, [...]).

You already use headings to properly mark your text, which helps users jump around documents... so think of pages as an alternate/more precise way of navigating.

Side Note: Also see another talk, "The Accessibility Supply Chain" at the 18:45 mark. In the Education market, page numbers are mentioned as very important. Instead, many are still sticking with rotten PDF/DOC files.

Side Note #2: And here's another short video, "ABC explains: a digital file is not necessarily accessible", showing a blind user navigating. He compares the same document in three forms:

• Image-based PDF
• Text-based
• Properly Marked Headings/Pages

He says "imagine if this was a 400-page book, which is very common in non-fiction".

[DaleDe]

It is a deficiency of PDF that the TOC is not always present. It is one of many reasons that it is not a good eBook format. Check our wiki for Accessible Books Consortium
and Accessible Publishing. Also look at the Blind category Category:Blind for information you may be interested in. You can contribute additional data yourself. For the blind sections are way more important than page numbers.

Dale

[Notjohn]

How weird. I see the title on every page of every book on my Fire tablet, including my self-pubbed ones! I'll check my PW when I can get it away from Susan.

Hitch, what does this mean?

>You do as we've discussed--add the ids based on page numbers, to match the print edition; create a page list, and alert Amazon and in their infinite wisdom and sole discretion, yes, they'll enable it. :-)

Create a page list?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Create a page list?

Page numbers in Kindle books are supposed to be "real page numbers" that match up to the pages of a print edition of the same book.

I believe that you are familiar with the <navMap> which defines a TOC in an EPUB2 NCX file. Each entry there links to the corresponding content in the book. The NCX can also have a <pageList> which links to the content corresponding to the start of each numbered page in the book.

To add pages you look at the text that starts each numbered page in your print edition, find the equivalent text in your EPUB, start a new element there if one does not already exist, add a unique "id" to the element containing the start of the text, and add a link to that HTML file/id in the NCX <pageList>.

There may be a tools that can perform some of this operation automatically, but I don't know of any.

(The above is all for EPUB2. There is an equivalent structure for EPUB3.)

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by jhowell

There may be a tools that can perform some of this operation automatically, but I don't know of any.

Shameless plug: my Sigil Pagelist plugin might help. You can use it to generate an epub2 page list from specially formatted page target entries.