One of the great things about e-reading devices like the Kindle is the ability to transfer your digital books (epub, azw3, mobi, etc.) to your device and read them for free. But sideloading books via USB or even the 'Send to Kindle' service comes with a few small costs, such as the inability to see the page number you're on or even having proper metadata info for your Kindle to work with.

For issues like these and more, an app like Calibre is the ideal book management tool that can fix things and make your books look like they were purchased or borrowed from Amazon. In this guide, we’ll look at how to use Calibre to add page numbers if they’re missing from your books.

You may have noticed that books you didn't buy through Amazon have their pages labeled by "location" rather than page numbers, giving them away. This can also be frustrating if you like to jump around in your book and would rather rely on page numbers than the dubious "location" unit.

Fortunately, this can all be solved partly by setting your Calibre preferences as shown below, and partly by the plugins and the metadata installed. Note that the metadata obtained for book pages can vary depending on publications, editions, and source.