A “page” on an e-reader is an ephemeral construct. Better to replace page numbers in printed books with the location number. You’re welcome.
Essentially any offset marker with sufficient resolution will do the job. Page numbers are here for ages, work for both electronic and dead-tree books (my PRS-505 reader shows page numbers and they are useful, my PDF readers as well (the PDFs have the page numbers encoded to the pages themselves so no wonder)). Granted, such system is quite “legacy”, but it is always backwards-compatible with non-electronic representations. Another fairly important aspect is that the numbers have sane length (up to 3 digits in most cases, rarely more).
So while page names are ephemeral in ebooks, they also serve as pretty good, backwards-compatible, cross-platform location numbers.
How long would the other proposed location numbers be? Numbers-only? Alphanumeric perhaps? How to deal with existing legacy readers? What’s your alternative proposal in detail?
I’m not proposing anything, because I’m not the one who has a problem with the current setup.
I recall using a formula to translate page numbers between my family’s paperback copies of Lord of the Rings, and the hardback numbers that all the roleplaying material, all the commentary used.
Given that the kindle and the hardback are published more or less simultaneously, it’s easy enough to program in the “real page numbers” then and there. redoing the calibration for a later, cheaper, edition sounds like too much to ask.
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A few people have been confused with your post then, because it came off as dissatisfied with any solution.
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No, I was just explaining that it’s not going to work like some people think it will. Different book editions may use their own pagination schemes, so there’s no guarantee that a particular line of text will end up with the same page number in different editions.
It will work (or not work) the same way it works (or doesn’t) in dead-tree form. When it becomes a problem, you can make a conversion table/formula with ease, by just taking the table-of-contents page offsets for individual chapters, and then linearly interpolate. This works even between languages. Granted, there may be some jitter in the results, but it is always better to be just a page or two off than to be lost entirely.
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Then perhaps you’re arguing with a concern that nobody has yet introduced? It’s been implemented for four years or so with no pushback.
Persons desired this because it’s still the convention to visualize that you’re on “page 45” than “location 12004”, not because they’re manually syncing their kindle with print books.
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@daneel asked for real page numbers twice in this thread. That’s how the subject started.
But then again, he also claimed to prefer the non-hyphenized justified “before” text example with the great big gaps between words, so It might or might not be crazy talk to begin with.
That makes more sense.
I could be wrong, but when someone wants “real page numbers”, I don’t see them asking for consistency among all platforms and e-readers and every book that has ever existed, just looking for whatever is provided by the publisher and not to see the “location” instead.
Since I’ve been summoned… 
Yeah. The Kindle app knows how many pages it needs to display the book given current display settings, and which page it’s on. I’d just like those over location, which is apparently a measure of 128 byte chunks in the file.
The Overdrive app can do that fine.
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Things could be worse.
http://www.wikihow.com/Dog-Ear-(Bookmark)-a-Book-Page
Wikihow is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
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The problem with that, as @art_carnage indicares, is that ebooks are basically one giant fluid chunk of html with chapter markers. The publisher can’t say “page break goes exactly here” because Ebook reader X has a different screen size and resolution to Kindle Y so their ‘pages’ fit a different number of characters. Not to mention user-selectable font sizes, line spacing, margin width, etc.
“Location” is kind of a weak solution. Percentage of book or chapter work fine for me on the Kindle Paperwhite, as does the “n minutes until end of chapter/book”, which sounds gimmicky but actually proved useful and fairly accurate based on page turn speed.
Right, and the formatting changes based on the specified text size. I think when people ask for “page numbers”, it’s a relative metric and based on expectations for how many page-flips they must do, which is still more useful than line position or position on a particular line “location”.
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The bible and koran have finding your place sussed —standardised chapter and verse markers. Doesn’t matter which edition, they’re always the same.
Exactly. I’d just rather see that I’m at page 158/473, as it gives me a better idea of how far into the book I am as compared to location 7482/22398, or whatever. Yeah, it’s the same percentage into the book, but the Kindle’s location info is effectively useless, because location numbers are just too large to easily parse in one’s head. It’s definitely improved since I first got my Kindle, but I’ve found that some books still don’t show page numbers, annoyingly.
Whoops, looks like I accidentally replied to @art_carnage instead of @Phrenological. But you’re both in on this conversation, so it’s all good 
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My guess is that it would be trivially easy to implement “158 of 473 page turns/taps/clicks” style markers. But Amazon decided not to (I think) because of the potential confusion of using something that walks, talks and quacks like a page number but doesn’t work very well for referencing since it changes with every user and setting. And gets messed by something as simple as picking up your reading from where you left off on a second device, or indeed just switching to landscape.
I find myself placing markers at each chapter break. It helps my pacing, if I can see dots on the progress bar.
Oh hey, exciting news about a font that has been on my Fire HD6 since I bought it 5 months ago!
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