Amazon will be launching a new (and missed!) page flipping feature for its existing line of e-book readers in the coming days, the company has announced.

The new feature will be reintroducing a concept that worked effectively for physical book copies.

Through digital means, the manual page flipping could not be easily done as users did not have the function to easily mark a page as they scanned through the pages. Specifically, you could not exactly hold your thumb to a page as you scrolled through the leaves when, for example, you needed to recheck an earlier passage for cross-referencing or had to revisit a chart that was being described in the current paragraph.

"With Page Flip, we've taken inspiration from how people read print books and improved upon it," describes Chuck Moore, Kindle vice president, in a statement.

Amazon's latest feature makes manual reading "digitally" available, without the need to remember or bookmark a page number as the reader (or app) does this automatically for you. This nifty functionality has long been expected, ever since e-book readers came out: what's the use of a new tech if it didn't improve upon the manual and ubiquitous ways of reading printed books?

"Page Flip makes it easier than ever to refer back to pictures in a political memoir, flip back and forth between a map and your current page in an epic fantasy series, or find passages you've highlighted in an investing guide," Moore adds.

The update will be coming in a free, over-the-air (OTA) release in the coming days for all Amazon Kindle surfaces, Fire tablets and Android and iOS apps. Amazon does note that not all titles will have the feature enabled despite an updated device.

"Page Flip is available on millions of books, with more being added every day. On the Kindle eBook Store page for a given book, look for 'Page Flip: Enabled' in the features list," the announcement says.

If enabled on a particular title, users can scan through pages and easily return to the page they were viewing by tapping a lower left icon on their devices. Two other view modes can also be accessed through the Page Flip feature: a bird's eye view and three-page view. The contextual menu for these modes can be brought up by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.

The bird's eye view can be accessed by tapping the rightmost button at the lower edge of the screen. This button zooms the user out and lists nine pages on the screen in a 3 x 3 grid to easily view or return to highlighted passages or graphics.

The three-page view can be accessed by tapping the leftmost button. This lets users scroll through the pages by either swiping left or right. This allows easier cross-referencing processes in contrast to single page views or 3 x 3 grids.

The announcement trailer for the feature can be viewed below: