I turn off show chapter numbers in peripheral books (this is probably a left-over from legacy SFM files). It would be useful to do the same for verses as hiding them with styles do not work with pop-ups.
Also, it would be nice to not display chapter number for books that only have \c 1 and \v 1 and no other chapters or verses.
Using changes does not seem to work. SAB seems to rely on the chapter/verse divisions before processing the changes.