# Page numbers



## Leuco (Dec 18, 2011)

So this may be a silly question, but I figured someone here would probably have a smart answer. Thanks in advance.

When you publish an ebook online for e-readers, do you need to include page numbers? _Should_ you include page numbers? The only reason I ask is because Smashwords recommends no page numbers. So anyway, what do you think?


----------



## Telcontar (Dec 18, 2011)

Page numbers are meaningless in ePublishing, as the text is not divided up into pages. If you did insert page numbers anyways (for whatever reason) the pages might not stay constant due to the reformatting options offered by most eReaders (able to change font, text size, etc). Place-keeping is accomplished with actual hyptertext 'bookmarks' rather than by remember the page you left off on, so that reason also doesn't apply.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne (Dec 19, 2011)

Just as Telcontar said.

Kindle books, in particular, use "locations." Since two people can read the same book on two different devices, and since readers can dynamically change the font size, a "page" (that is, all the words you can see simultaneously) can contain radically different numbers of words. As a result, Kindle books break everything up into "locations" which is something like 128 bytes per location (usually about 25 words).

If you want to see this in action, you can actually read Kindle books using the free (web-based) Amazon Reader; go to read.amazon.com, and any Kindle books you've bought can be read there in a web interface.


----------



## zizban (Dec 19, 2011)

For ebooks, page numbers are pretty useless, since each device has their own internal way of tracking pages.


----------



## SeverinR (Dec 20, 2011)

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> Just as Telcontar said.
> 
> Kindle books, in particular, use "locations." Since two people can read the same book on two different devices, and since readers can dynamically change the font size, a "page" (that is, all the words you can see simultaneously) can contain radically different numbers of words. As a result, Kindle books break everything up into "locations" which is something like 128 bytes per location (usually about 25 words).
> 
> If you want to see this in action, you can actually read Kindle books using the free (web-based) Amazon Reader; go to read.amazon.com, and any Kindle books you've bought can be read there in a web interface.



That is why I love "Kindle to pc" I don't have to wear glasses to read, just increase the size.


----------



## Leuco (Dec 20, 2011)

Right. I guess it was a silly question. Thanks everyone for the response and information!


----------

