The original page breaks were necessitated by the size of paper the publisher used.  There is almost never a functional meaning to the page breaks in a book (except things like chapter breaks, which are easily marked up with horizontal rules or something to that effect). 

Speaking as a writer, I strongly disagree. I often use page breaks as a transition, and most other fiction writers do the same thing. (That's where I learned it.) To keep page breaks in a TXT version, simply insert # # # at the left margin where the page break belongs. That way TXT isn't confused or confusing, and the reader can see that as a page break.

 

Anne