From the Kindle Nation Mailbag: Page Numbers

Thanks to Kindle Nation citizen Nicole B. for sharing her experiences with the challenge of leaving page numbers behind with the Kindle.

Hi Steve!
I just upgraded my kindle to the latest.  I love it.  Thank you for Kindle Nation,  I have been a follower since my first kindle.
I have a question,  you might be able to help me with.
Is there anyway to know page numbers on a kindle.  For example I have some reference books on my kindle that like to refer to "See page #"  I find it frustrating not  to be able to skip to that "page".  Also,  in my book club,  I am the only kindle user and everyone refers to page numbers that I can not refer to.
Thank you  for your input.

Sincerely,
Nicole

Thanks, Nicole, and you're not the only one who has been annoyed at this.

There is a reason behind the lack of page numbers on the Kindle: the Kindle team decided in favor of providing multiple font sizes, which means that, for any book, depending on which of the Kindle's font sizes one chooses, you could arguably come up with six or so different "lengths," when measured simply the number of screens it takes to get through the book.

As you've suggested, this presents problems for anyone trying to refer to such and such a page on the Kindle, whether it's for a book group or for a citation in an academic research paper. Amazon hasn't provided any real help on the issue, but I do think it is likely, when the Kindle Apps Store finally opens, that it will include an App that translates Kindle book locations, with possibly varying degrees of precision, into page numbers in the books' print-formatted iterations.

Meanwhile, for book groups, here's a work-around -- involving the powerful "search" functionality of the Kindle -- that only takes a few seconds and should work in some situations.

Let's say your book group is discussing Rena Walmsley's steamy but unforgettable novel Girl on Fire, and focusing on the scene where Alicia Wentworth returns to Cabot Academy and apologizes, for her misadventure, to the head of the school. It won't help you to know that your fellow book group members are focused on page 217 of their paperback copies, and chances are that none of them are going to be able to direct you to location 2762 in your Kindle edition. But if someone will give you a few keywords, the process of finding the focus of discussion can go very quickly.

If someone calls out "Miss Sharp, I'm so sorry," and you just type in "sharp so sorry" and use the 5-way controller to select "find," you'll be delivered almost immediately to the passage under discussion, as seen in the screen shot below.

I hope that helps at least a little.