Real Page Numbers Coming to the Kindle!

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It’s the biggest complaint about ebooks, and Amazon’s Kindle in particular; page numbers go wonky when you convert a book to e-form! It makes it difficult to track between paper and ebook form (say, for a class or a book club), plus it’s just an easy target when you want a reason to complain about ebook flaws. 😉

Not anymore! According to the Kindle Blog:

– Real Page Numbers – Our customers have told us they want real page numbers that match the page numbers in print books so they can easily reference and cite passages, and read alongside others in a book club or class. Rather than add page numbers that don’t correspond to print books, which is how page numbers have been added to e-books in the past, we’re adding real page numbers that correspond directly to a book’s print edition. We’ve already added real page numbers to tens of thousands of Kindle books, including the top 100 bestselling books in the Kindle Store that have matching print editions and thousands more of the most popular books. Page numbers will also be available on our free “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” Kindle apps in the coming months.

And there was much rejoicing in all the land!

In addition, another neat feature Amazon is slipping in that should make authors and readers happy:

– Before You Go… – When you reach the end of the book, we will now offer a seamless experience that lets you immediately rate the book, share a message about the book with your social network, get personalized recommendations for what to read next, and see more books by the same author.

That’s pretty brilliant. For one thing, if you just read a book that’s part of a series, it’s a super easy way to upsell you on the next title. And the more books you read through your Kindle or a Kindle app, the better the recommendations become, the more books you read that way, etc. I also think the ability to message at the end of a book is smart. Personally, I don’t have much interest in tweeting random passages from books, but I would happily share messages about books I enjoyed!

You can manually install this update as a beta if you own a Kindle 3, or simply wait until it is finalized and sent as an over the air update. Check out Amazon’s official blog for more details!

 

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About the Author

Zek
Zek has been a gadget fiend for a long time, going back to their first PDA (a Palm M100). They quickly went from researching what PDA to buy to following tech news closely and keeping up with the latest and greatest stuff. They love writing about ebooks because they combine their two favorite activities; reading anything and everything, and talking about fun new tech toys. What could be better?

2 Comments on "Real Page Numbers Coming to the Kindle!"

  1. Geez, *finally*! It’s worked fine on eReader for years, so it’s always baffled me that Amazon’s implementation was so bad that way.

    How about now adding the ability to turn off full justification? PLEASE?

  2. Christopher Gavula | February 8, 2011 at 9:55 am |

    Yeah – I have to agree – neither of these features means much to me – there are other features/issues I’d rather see worked on first, especially since I don’t read much from the bestseller list, but I’m glad they are listening to requests/concerns!

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