Amazon recently announced that they will be assigning real page numbers to their Kindle books.
One of the great features of the Kindle is the ability to change font and text size in their e-books. But for scholarly types, this makes citations difficult when using electronic books. Hopefully this make citations easier for those using e-books.
While this is an improvement for those needing to make citations, David Pogue, NY Times tech writer, calls this an imperfect solution.
I think adding real page numbers is an improvement because it provides an absolute location that is the same whether you are using dead-tree media or electronic media. Before this change, the "location numbers" didn't easily translate to those reading physical books.
What are your thoughts?
As amazing as I think the Kindle is and other readers like it, I'm still a huge fan of paper books, haha. My eyes seem to get tired from staring at a screen for so long. There are times when I find myself reading from a paperback and wish that the text was a little bigger, but I seem to deal with it just fine. I guess since I'm not that familiar with the kindle, did they not have page numbers before?
ReplyDeleteI didn't read Pogue's article yet, but my gut response is that it would be best to have page number reference on the Kindle that correspond to the physical book pages. It just avoids one source of confusion and makes it easier to be on the proverbial "same page."
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