Amazon must have heard the martini-fueled whining of Wired.com New York Bureau Chief John C Abell, for it is finally adding real page numbers to Kindle Books through a firmware update (v3.1).

One big complaint about e-readers is that their page numbers don’t correspond to the page numbers in a printed book. This makes it tricky to match where you are if reading in E Ink and regular ink, and also makes referencing passages very hard. (It’s a pain if you’re discussing the book in a class or book club where some people are reading in one format and some in another.) You can get around these problems with search, and the Kindle uses “page locations” to keep your place.

Amazon seems to have solved the problem of transferring numbers from physical, fixed-sized pages to the virtual page, where changing font sizes alter the number of “pages” a book has. The fix is clever: The Kindle only displays the page number when you press the “menu” button, working out the equivalent paper-book position on demand. And because the Kindle pages don’t correspond exactly to the printed page, it tells you the page number for the text at the top right of the screen, i.e., the first few words.

And to let you know just which book your page numbers match up with, there is a new “Page Numbers Source ISBN” field in the e-book’s description.

The 3.1 update also brings “Public Notes”, which lets you share your note, and “Before You Go”, which lets you rate the book from the Kindle when you get to the end, and see recommendations. Finally, newspaper and magazine layouts have been improved to look more like a proper table of contents.

The “Early Preview Release” of v3.1 can be downloaded now, or you can just wait for it to be delivered automatically. Page numbers will be coming to Kindle apps in the future.

Kindle Software Update Version 3.1 — Early Preview Release [Amazon]