eBooks Are Temporary
In case you haven't noticed, in the last several years there has been an explosion of ebooks and ebook readers (Kindles, Nooks, iBooks, etc...). The objective is obviously to provide a digital option for reading books, since people now have the devices to do so.
The problem however is that the ebook technology is doing it's best to mimic the traditional paper model, which looks somewhat odd in a digital world. - do we really need to simulate page turning when there are no pages?
I happen to work for an education publisher, and we provide eBook versions of all of our textbooks. The beauty of course is that we also provide a digital layer of audio, video, activities, assessment, etc... which enhances the book... but... it still follows the printed book structure. So, there is a 'table of contents', glossary, index, chapters, pages... etc.
To be fair, the textbook objective for eBooks is a bit different because the digital version does need to correspond to the print version (for students to correlate) so retaining the structure is necessary, but the eBook enterprise as a whole is really just a digital copy - a digital version of the same text with search and bookmarking.
I am not arguing against this ebook model though... because it makes sense. People understand how a book works, you turn pages to go from one end to another end; you bookmark what you like; you reference an index to find something. So, to get people to read in a digital world, it's important to keep those conventions in place, ...people understand the association.
But it's all temporary.. ebooks are just transitional until the next generation of readers come along and don't really care about paper model simulations.
Sequential pages are nonsensical on a digital display; long connected sequences of chapters may not be the best way to provide a reading experience; pages with numbers; etc... I am guessing that "the book," whatever that means in a digital world, will look very different soon.