Chapter 12. Reading on Your NOOK and Beyond
Although your NOOK has many unique features and capabilities, when it comes right down to it, its primary purpose is for reading books and other content. One of the benefits of owning a NOOK is that you can carry a complete library with you everywhere you go. If you don’t happen to have your NOOK with you, you can also read your ebooks on your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Android phone, and Blackberry.
Various forms of content are available to read on your NOOK, such as NOOKbooks, secure eReader books from Fictionwise, PDFs, and other EPUB. Appendix A, “Understanding ebook Formats,” explains more about the details of ebook formats.
Browsing Your Library
There are two main places for content on your NOOK: The Daily and My Library.
The Daily
The Daily includes information automatically delivered to your NOOK. You can find a collection of short articles of interest to NOOKies (called feeds), notifications of software updates, lending offers, special offers from B&N, and notifications of new subscription content such as magazines and newspapers.
Some notifications such as new subscription content and LendMe offers show up as balloon tips on your NOOK’s Home screen. You can access more details on these notifications by visiting The Daily.
By default, The Daily displays feeds, notifications, and subscriptions. If you prefer to see only one of these categories in The Daily, tap Show on the touchscreen, and select the category you want to display. You can also sort entries in The Daily by tapping Sort and choosing Most Recent, Type, or Author. The default is to sort by type.
Because content in The Daily changes often, it’s a good idea to check from time to time to see what’s new. B&N not only offers interesting information about your NOOK and about ebooks and other content, but it also occasionally provides special offers to NOOK owners.
Your NOOK divides My Library into two areas: My B&N Library and My Documents. There are a few differences between these two areas, so now look at each one separately.
My B&N Library
My B&N Library contains all the content you purchase from B&N. This includes not only books you purchase, but also magazine and newspaper subscriptions, sample books, and free books downloaded from B&N.
Items in My B&N Library are in one of three categories:
• Items on your NOOK:Items on your NOOK are available for reading immediately by selecting the item. They are stored in your NOOK’s memory or on a microSD card if one is installed.
• Archived items:These are items in My NOOK Library on bn.com and that have been downloaded to your NOOK at one point but that have since been removed from your NOOK. These items appear as light-colored text (grayed out) in My B&N Library.
• Items in your online digital library and not your NOOK:Items that have been added to My NOOK Library on bn.com but have never been downloaded to your NOOK display a Download option when selected. After you download one of these items to your NOOK, you can archive it to remove it.
For more information on using My NOOK Library on bn.com, see Chapter 21, “Using My NOOK Library.”
If you purchase a book using the Shop on your NOOK, that book is automatically downloaded to your NOOK within a few minutes. If you purchase an NOOKbook from B&N using your computer, the NOOKbook is added to My NOOK Library on bn.com, but it isn’t downloaded to your NOOK automatically.
Caution
If you plan to be away from Wi-Fi hotspots and Fast & Free Wireless, you should make sure that the items that appear in My B&N Library have actually been downloaded to your NOOK. Unfortunately, there isn’t a visual indicator to show you this. The only way to tell if an item has actually been downloaded to your NOOK is to select the item to see if a Download option is on the touchscreen menu. If there is, the item hasn’t yet been downloaded to your NOOK.
Some items in My B&N Library might have an Indicator icon immediately to the right of the title. This icon indicates special properties of the item (such as the ability to lend the item to a friend using the LendMe feature), or it might indicate that an item has been lent to someone or is borrowed from someone.
For more information on the LendMe feature, see Chapter 13, “Lending and Borrowing Books on Your NOOK Using LendMe.”
The following icons might be displayed for an item:
• LendMe:Indicates that the item can be lent to a friend using the LendMe feature.
• On Loan:Indicates that the item has been lent to a friend. You cannot read this item for a period of 14 days from the lend date.
• Borrowed:Indicates that the item has been borrowed from a friend. The item will be available to you for 14 days.
• From a Friend:Indicates that the item is one that a friend has offered to lend to you. After you accept the offer, the item shows a Borrowed icon.
• Sample:Indicates that the item is a sample ebook from B&N.
• New:Indicates that the item was downloaded to your NOOK within the past 48 hours and that you haven’t yet read the item.
To browse the items in My B&N Library, use the up and down arrows on the touchscreen to highlight an item. The following menu options are available for interacting with a selected item.
View Item Details & Options
When you tap View Item Details & Options, the reading screen displays the title and author (or publisher for newspaper and magazines) and any overview information provided by the publisher.
After selecting this item, the touchscreen provides a menu of options available for the selected content. The options available on the touchscreen menu differ depending on the content you select:
• Download:Displayed only when the content has not already been downloaded to your NOOK. Tapping Download transfers it using either Fast & Free Wireless or Wi-Fi.
• Read:Displayed only when the content has been downloaded to your NOOK. Tapping Read opens the content on the reading screen.
• Lend:Displayed only when the publisher has enabled the LendMe feature. This menu item enables you to lend the content to a friend.
• Rating:A series of stars is available so that you can rate your content. Tap the stars, and five large stars display. Touch the star that corresponds to your rating.
Tip
If you want to remove your rating, tap the leftmost star, and drag your finger toward the left away from the stars.
• View:By default, your NOOK displays an overview of the selected content, including a synopsis paragraph if available. To switch to a detailed view that includes the publisher, publication date, and other information about the content, tap View and then tap Details.
• Archive:Removes the selected content from your NOOK’s storage. The item is still visible in My B&N Library, but if you want to read the content, you need to unarchive it first.
Note
There isn’t a way to delete content from your library from the NOOK. To delete content (including sample books), you need to use My NOOK Library at the B&N website.
For more information on using My NOOK Library, see Chapter 21, “Using My NOOK Library.”
Show Covers
In addition to selecting content from My B&N Library by scrolling, you can view covers for your content by tapping Show Covers. Covers display in full color on the touchscreen; by swiping your finger left and right, you can browse through them. When you find something you want to read, simply tap the cover. If you’ve already downloaded the item to your NOOK, it opens in the reading pane. Otherwise, you are taken to the overview for the item, where you can tap Download to copy the content to your NOOK. Tap the X in the upper right to close the gallery of covers.
Change View
You have several ways to view your library. The options in this menu enable you to determine this. You can choose to Show Shelves or Hide Shelves. If you have added shelves (for example, Fiction, European History, and so on), with Show Shelves you see books on their shelves sorted in alphabetical order. With Hide Shelves selected, your books are ordered according to what you have chosen in the Sort By option: Most Recent, Title, or Author.
The Show option enables you to narrow the type of content you see: All, eBooks, Magazines, or Newspapers.
Finally, you can choose either Hide Archived Items or Show Archived Items. If you have Show Archived Items turned on, you can then select the title in your library and unarchive it.
Note
The shelves for My B&N Library and My Documents cannot be viewed together. In other words, one set of shelves exists for both sets of ebooks, but while in My B&N Library, the My Documents ebooks on the same shelf do not appear, and vice versa.
Shelves
You can organize your ebooks into shelves, aligning them into whatever categories you want for easier access to similar ebooks. You can go directly to a shelf of books by tapping Go to Shelf and then tapping the particular shelf you want to go to.
If you have shelves you created and you want to place ebooks onto those shelves, this is the option you want. Tap Place On or Remove from Shelf. You see a list of shelves in the touchscreen with up and down navigation arrows. Use those arrows to navigate from book to book. After a book is selected, tap the shelf you want it on. You can add an ebook to more than one shelf. A check mark appears next to the shelves that an ebook is on. To remove the ebook from a shelf, tap that shelf and the check mark disappears.
If you want to set the order your shelves appear in, tap Reorder Shelves. The reading screen shows your shelves. Use the up and down keys to select the shelf; then tap Move This Shelf Up or Move This Shelf Down. The reading screen refreshes showing you the new order.
To create a new shelf, tap Create a New Shelf. Type the name of the shelf and tap Submit. To remove a shelf, tap Remove a Shelf, tap the shelf you want to delete, and tap OK.
To rename a shelf, tap Rename a Shelf, tap the shelf you want to rename, update the name, and tap Submit.
Check for New B&N Content
You can check for new B&N content by tapping Check for New B&N Content. This is useful in cases where you’ve purchased a book from the B&N website and you want to download the book to your NOOK.
This menu option is also used to check for books a friend has lent you using the LendMe feature.
Search
This menu option searches My B&N Library for all the search terms entered. This feature doesn’t search inside your content. It searches only the metadata for your content. Metadata includes the title, author, publisher, contributors, and subject.
Sort By
You can sort My B&N Library by date (Most Recent), title, or author. The default is by date with the most recent at the top of the list.
Archiving My B&N Library Items
As mentioned earlier, you can archive an item by tapping View Item Details and Options and then tapping Archive. Archiving is a means to remove an item you purchased from B&N from your NOOK. Archived items still display in My B&N Library, but they are displayed using faded text.
Tip
If you archive an item and it isn’t displayed in faded text in My B&N Library, tap Check for New B&N Content to refresh your library; it should properly reflect the archival status. This should happen automatically after archiving an item, but the library sometimes does not refresh correctly.
When an item is archived, you can still view details on the item, rate the item, and lend the item to a friend using the LendMe feature. However, to read the item, you must unarchive it.
To unarchive an item, select it in My B&N Library; then tap Unarchive on the touchscreen. Your NOOK asks you to confirm that you want to unarchive the item. Tap OK, and you be return to My B&N Library. The item you unarchived might still be displayed in faded text, but your NOOK automatically checks for new B&N content and updates My Library shortly.
Tip
You can manage your ebook library (including archiving and unarchiving items) using My NOOK Library at bn.com. My NOOK Library is covered in detail in Chapter 21, “Using My NOOK Library.”
After you unarchive an item, your NOOK automatically downloads it to your NOOK for reading. However, it can take a few minutes before the item downloads. If you want to start reading the item immediately, you can select it and then tap Download to download the item and read it.
Note
Items often start downloading automatically after you select them. When this happens, you see a progress indicator next to the Download item on the touchscreen.
My Documents
My Documents contains content you manually copy to your NOOK from other sources. B&N calls the process of manually copying books and other content to your NOOK sideloading, and any reading content you sideload onto your NOOK appears in the My Documents portion of My Library.
Tip
If you view My B&N Library, you can switch to My Documents by tapping View My Documents on the touchscreen.
Just as with My B&N Library, you can browse items in My Documents using the up and down arrows on the touchscreen. You might notice that some of the options available for items in My B&N Library are not available in My Documents. For example, you cannot browse covers for items in My Documents.
Note
If a cover is available for an item in My Documents, you see the cover on the touchscreen while reading the item. The cover will not be visible otherwise.
After you select an item in My Documents, you see the following menu options on the touchscreen.
View Item Details & Options
When you tap this option, you see the details for the selected item. Details include the publisher, publication date, and so on. You also see the file path for the selected item.
Tip
The file path begins with NOOK if the selected item is stored in your NOOK’s internal memory. If the item is stored in a microSD card, it begins with external sdcard.
After you tap View Item Details & Options, the only menu option available for sideloaded content is Read.
Check for New Content
After you sideload content onto your NOOK’s internal memory or a microSD card, you need to tap Check for New Content to add that content to My Documents. You also need to tap this option for your NOOK to reflect any content you deleted.
Tip
If you have sideloaded a lot of content onto a microSD card, your NOOK may not recognize that content for several minutes after a reboot. If you reboot your NOOK and it looks like your sideloaded content is missing, be patient and it should appear within a few minutes.
You can think of the Check for New Content option as a refresh option for My Documents. If you add or remove any content, you need to refresh your NOOK’s view of My Documents by tapping this option.
Reading Books on Your NOOK
After you select an item to read, you are taken to the starting point that the publisher has chosen for that item. This might or might not be the first page. For example, some ebooks open on the first page of Chapter 1. Other ebooks open on the cover or title page. The publisher of the book decides which page is visible when you first open an ebook.
As you’re reading, use the Next Page and Previous Page buttons along the edge of your NOOK to turn the page. When you turn the page, you notice a slight delay and a flashing on the reading screen. This is normal and is a result of the E Ink technology used in your NOOK. The flashing of the display is actually a result of your NOOK first clearing the screen and then displaying the new page. If your NOOK didn’t first clear the display, you’d see remnants of the previous page each time you turned the page. By charging the entire screen before displaying the next page, your NOOK ensures that you see a fresh and crisp image of the new page.
Tip
As long as the touchscreen is not illuminated, you can also swipe it to turn pages. Swipe right to left to move to the next page and left to right to move to the previous page.
Note
B&N has released incremental software updates to the NOOK since its release, and each of these updates has made page-turning faster. You might see additional improvements in this area, but there’s no way for B&N to eliminate the delay completely when turning pages because of limitations in the current E Ink technology.
If you want to quickly navigate to another part of the book, tap Go To on the touchscreen. You can navigate to the cover of the book by tapping Go To and then Cover. You can also navigate directly to a particular chapter by tapping Go To, Chapter, and then the chapter name. If your book has not automatically synced with another NOOK reading device, you can force it by tapping Last Page Saved on BN.com. Your NOOK can look up the page information and then jump to that page location.
Changing the Text Font and Text Size
Your NOOK enables you to easily change the text font and text size while reading. To change the font or the text size, tap Preferences; then tap Text Font or Text Size on the touchscreen while reading.
Your NOOK supports six text sizes, from Extra Small to Extra Extra Large. To change the text size, tap Preferences, tap Text Size, and then tap the desired text size. It takes a few seconds for your NOOK to resize the text.
To change the text font, tap Preferences, tap Text Font, and select one of the available fonts. Your NOOK offers a choice of Amasis, Helvetica Neue, and Light Classic. Amasis and Light Classic are both serif fonts, and Helvetica Neue is a sans-serif font.
Note
Font settings affect all content, not just the content you are currently reading. In other words, if you select a text size of Extra Small, all content with sizable text appears as Extra Small.
Although you can modify the text size and text font for most content, you can’t change these settings for all content:
• Light Classic is not available when reading content in eReader format.
• You cannot change the text font if the publisher created the content with a specific font embedded in it.
• You cannot change the text font for PDF files. If the creator of the PDF file embedded a particular font, your NOOK uses that font. Otherwise, it uses the Light Classic font.
• Some ebooks consist of pages scanned as images, usually as PDF files. You cannot change the text font for these ebooks.
You can find out the ebook format of sideloaded content using the View Item Details & Options menu item. The file path includes the filename, and the file extension reflects the format of the ebook. However, you cannot easily tell whether B&N content is in EPUB or eReader format.
Autosaving Page Location on BN.com
In the Preferences menu, you can tap Auto Save Page on BN.com. Assuming you have the Fast & Free Wireless or a Wi-Fi connection active, this option sends the page location information to My NOOK Library on bn.com. When you open one of the NOOKapps, a NOOKcolor, or NOOKstudy registered to your account, the page information is communicated to that device. In other words, page location for NOOKbooks is now synced across devices.
Note
Notes, bookmarks, and highlights are not synced from the NOOK to any of the NOOK apps or NOOKcolor. Only the page location is synced.
Looking Up Words in the Dictionary
One of the most convenient features of your NOOK is to quickly look up the definitions of words you don’t know. If you’re reading a book and encounter a word you don’t know, tap Look Up Word on the touchscreen and your NOOK displays a four-way control enabling you to highlight the word. Pressing the up or down arrow on the touchscreen moves the selection up or down a line. Pressing the left or right arrow moves the selection to the next or previous word.
Note
Looking up words is not supported for subscription content on your NOOK. However, you can look up words for subscription content when reading in the Desktop eReader application on your computer.
Highlight the word you want to look up and tap Look Up to retrieve the definition. Your NOOK displays the definition in a shaded box. After you’ve read the definition, tap OK and your NOOK returns to the page you were reading.
Tip
At times, you might find that pressing down on the control skips a line of text. This happens because of the way text reflows when the text size is applied on your NOOK. If your NOOK skips a line when you press down and you want to highlight a word on the previous line, simply press the left arrow on the touchscreen to move to the last word on the previous line.
Looking up a word that is far down on a page can be frustrating because doing so requires you to tap the down arrow repeatedly. B&N could greatly improve upon this feature by enabling you to tap the up arrow when you are on the top line of a page to move to the bottom line of the same page. It would also be more convenient to hold down an arrow button to move the highlight repeatedly. Hopefully you’ll see improvements in a future software upgrade for the NOOK.
Reading Subscription Content
In addition to books, B&N provides magazine and newspaper subscriptions for your NOOK. B&N automatically delivers subscription content to your NOOK as long as either a Wi-Fi or Fast & Free Wireless connection is available.
For more information on subscribing to content on your NOOK, see Chapter 16, “Shopping and Visiting B&N on Your NOOK.”
Unlike books, subscription content isn’t presented in a linear format. Content is often presented as article headlines followed by a small synopsis of each article. To read the specific article, use the up and down arrows on the touchscreen to highlight the article headline; then tap the select button on the touchscreen to open the article. After an article is open, you can use the Next Page and Previous Page buttons to navigate between pages just as you do when reading a book.
Many magazines and newspapers enable you to skip between sections using the Go To menu option on the touchscreen. Tap Go To and then tap Section to see a list of available sections. Tap the desired section to immediately go to it.
Note
Some subscription content doesn’t provide helpful sections for navigation. For example, I subscribe to PC Magazine on my NOOK, and when I tap Go To, Section, the only options are Front Cover and PC Magazine. That doesn’t help much when I want to navigate to parts of the magazine.
Subscription content often contains links that make navigating the content easier. For example, when reading The Wall Street Journal, you can move to the next section by using the down arrow on the touchpad to highlight Next Section at the top of the reading screen and tapping select on the touchscreen.
You can search the text of subscription content by tapping Find on the touchscreen, entering your search term, and tapping Search. Tap Find Next to locate the next occurrence of your search term and Find Previous to find the previous occurrence.
For more information on subscription content, including when your NOOK automatically deletes subscription content, see Chapter 16, “Shopping and Visiting B&N on Your NOOK.”
This chapter covered a lot of information on reading content on your NOOK. However, your NOOK is only one device of many that provides access to your My NOOK Library. You can also read content on your computer, your iPhone, and other devices as well, which the next chapter covers.