Page Number Versus Position on Kindle
willd on Aug 10th 2008
This is a much bruited topic and one that creates a little bit of anxiety for us bibliophiles who have made the conversion to the Kindle. How can I tell what page I am on??? I mean, I have only spent my whole life using page numbers as the reference point for a) how far along in the book I am, and b) any references to the text that I want to make in a post, article, or other scholarly writing.
This lingering anxiety tells me something about the “purpose” of the Kindle. That purpose is reading in a “frictionless” way (adjective courtesy of Jeff Bezos). The Kindle is not very well set up to address these other little anxieties I feel.
So, I got out my calculator to see if I could find a rule for converting Kindle’s “position number” into the “page numbers” of the actual book.
OK, first problem: which actual book–the hardcover, the paperback? First editions, fifth edition? Right there you see the intractability of the problem.
But I forged on, nonetheless, with my hardcover copy of Carol Dweck’s Mindset. You get the wackiest correlation if you try to literally use every paper page fo the book. First, all those pages aren’t in the Kindle edition. Second, spacing considerations make it almost impossible to come up with a formula that is anywhere near accurate if you try to use all the pages.
I got closest to a useful formula when I took the first actual numbered page of the book (not including the introduction)–that is, a page with “1″ on it, and looked up the corresponding “position” on my Kindle. As it turns out, Page 1 appears at position “95″ on the Kindle. Then, I went to the last full page of the text, page 239 (not the notes, index, or other “last” page) and checked the position: 4035. So, I had 3940 positions spread over 236 pages (the first page of text was actually page 3). 3940 divided by 236 yields 16.69 positions per page.
Using this formula I could pretty much find the page in book if I knew the position. In all my test cases, I landed within one page of the text I was searching for if I divided the position number by 16.69.
Whew! If you have a friend with the print book and you want to point them to a passage, use of the chapter number might be your best bet. If they want to point you to a passage, you can search for a key term. Or you can both try this little formula and wait for the MLA to provide us some guidance!
Filed in The Kindle Reading Experience | 11 responses so far
Lee Ann Spillane Aug 17th 2008 at 04:48 am 1
The dots along the bottom of the page, as you explained them, are so helpful to me now! Thank you. I like knowing where I am in the book and who knew I used that to anticipate the text?!
Richard Mar 22nd 2009 at 06:30 pm 2
Very helpful, thanks!
Mark Eifler May 6th 2009 at 06:45 pm 3
Thanks for the conversion formula–but the problem cannot be easily solved by MLA.
I am a history professor, and having ebooks would be a boon to reading, teaching, etc. BUT the lack of page numbers is the tip of the iceberg here. If MLA were to accept Kindle Locations instead of page numbers, how would someone else look the citation up? This is the point of having a citation, after all. Currently I can either buy the book, or (much more likely) I can look it up in a library. But the ONLY way to look up a Kindle location in a citation is to both buy a Kindle and to then buy the book itself. Libraries cannot share Kindle books.
Today Kindle released the Kindle DX for education, but this problem is likely to be a major problem for Amazon, and may make it incredibly difficult for them to penetrate the academic market. It seems to me there are two possible solutions: Kindle books switch to (or add in) page numbers that correspond to a printed text, OR they make multiple Kindle available to libraries and scholars, and distribute ebooks freely or very next to it (say a one day rental for ten cents, somewhat in the way iTunes lets you rent movies as well as own them). The page number seems the fastest and easiest solution.
Please note, I am not a lover of page numbers for their own sake. The Location is actually more precise in looking up a citation. BUT the problem is in the inability of other scholars (or a student’s professors) to check on a citation freely–literally “free”-ly. E books have tremendous potential in academia–given the need to publish, and especially in the current market where publishing of any kind (but especially academic publishing) is extremely limited. Were Kindle to simply list page numbers, it could become a booming platform for academic publishing–both books and journals. Given the potential, and Amazon’s goal of penetrating the academic market, it is mystifying why they decided to eliminate the page number.
Dreggor Gade May 23rd 2009 at 07:03 pm 4
Well said, Mark. I, too, am having the same problem. Truthfully, it ought to be quite a simple matter for Amazon to include a selection with the wheel (or 2G nub) that can selection the “location” and translate it into what the standard paper text edition would number it as in relation to pages. That really would be an exceptionally simple matter to tackle an introduce in a software update, and an absolutely necessary one if they want to successfully tout the new DX as an academic or business tool.
There are only two reasons that I can imagine Amazon would not add this basic functionality. One, if they are trying pull some of that Apple/iTunes “proprietary” b.s. in order to rake in some extra cash by crippling their product. If so, for shame. Two, it may perhaps be some little, screwy clause Amazon has with the individual book’s publishing companies that contractually does not allow Amazon to provide that information, with the publishers greedily and indifferently hoping to make consumers and writers alike “double dip” with an electronic and paper version of their text. If so, for shame.
Regardless, I am going to write and call Amazon specifically about this because it’s becoming too problematic. I highly recommend that everyone reading this does the same thing so that we, the consumers, are heard and kept satisfied, especially when this involves our livelihoods.
Dean Ritz Jun 3rd 2009 at 02:27 pm 5
The field of law solved this. Based on the original publication of a judicial decision, electronic reprints use *### (e.g, “*723″) to indicate the start of a page with that number. It’s placed inline of the text. That way, the opinions can be formatted and distributed without losing the anchor to the original (reference) pagination. This doesn’t require new technology in the Kindle… just the insertion of those characters in the text. If they wanted to add a feature to the Kindle, the page number notation, above, could be made visible or invisible as a preference.
Wayne Jun 6th 2009 at 11:21 am 6
Page numbers are not a good solution for finding the position in a book. Think of the case of trying to tell somewhere a spot in their hardback version of a book when the other person only has the paperback. The pages don’t match. While education gets around this by requiring a particular printed edition, it would actually be better if printed books changed from numbering their pages to numbering their sentences (which is essentially what Kindle location numbers are). If publishers could come up with a standardized position indicator (and basing it on sentences seems like a nice way to go), it could be used in all paper books and ebooks. People would just need to get used to seeing something like “42 - 69″ on the page instead of “11″. For a paper book, a good transition scheme may even be to include both the location range for the page and an edition-specific page number.
Grace Curtis Jun 11th 2009 at 11:30 pm 7
I agree with Wayne. Yes, thinking about pages is thinking inside the box. Good response Wayne!
Ken Klemme Jun 17th 2009 at 05:51 pm 8
Or… MLA could come up with a citation rule for electronic print media, since standardized citation methodology is what what they exist to do!
David Stewart Jun 19th 2009 at 08:22 am 9
The legal reference system is a good point. Another system of common reference numbers can be seen in any good edition of, say, Plato’s dialogues. Scholars use the system all the time.
I would NOT want inline references, though—not visible ones, though. It would be great to have them as something that can be turned on and off, and used in a contents or location table.
Lisa McElroy Jun 23rd 2009 at 03:21 pm 10
I am also having huge problems with this, as I now do most of my book reading on my Kindle. I am an academic, however, and can’t cite to pages. I am having to have my assistant look through the hard copy book, which I request from the library, and I tell her “about half way through” or something like that. If anyone comes up with a good way to figure this out, I would appreciate it.
P.S. As a law professor, I teach my students about “star pincites” all the time. I agree with David Stewart that this would be a nice feature to turn on and off. It would also help for my book club, as I can’t follow when someone says, “I liked the language on page XXX.”
Kat Parr Jun 24th 2009 at 02:04 pm 11
One thing I’ve noticed w/r/t this, is that the Location numbers change with font size. This leads me to believe that the numbers are based on some formula having to do with paragraphs and word count. I’m experimenting with that to see what I can come up with. For example, in a Kindle version of The Trial, at the third smallest font size, the final paragraph at Location 1000-1009 begins “That spring, whenever possible, K. usually…”. However, when “flipping” to the next page and the continuation of the sentence …”spent his evenings after work - …” the location is 1009-19. Thus it’s possible that 1009 is the start/continuation indicator of the paragraph beginning on the previous page, and 19 is some indicator of… ? I have no idea, actually. Sigh.