Tap a book cover, and you get sent to the first page of the book, or if you’ve been reading it, you go to the last page you read. You’ll get a simple, uninterrupted view of the book page—text along with any illustrations, photos, and so on. At the very bottom of the page, you see the page number you’re on and the total number of pages in the book. You may also see icons that look like blue notepads along the right side of the page—these indicate notes that you or another reader has added to the book. Tap a note to read it. (For the full story on notes, see Handling Notes.)
Note
The page numbers at the bottom of the page are for the NOOK version of the book, not the print version.
To move ahead one page, tap any spot along the right edge of the screen, or swipe your finger to the left. To move back one page, tap any spot along the left edge of the screen, or swipe your finger to the right.
That’s just the basics, though. To unleash the full power of the NOOK’s reader, tap anywhere in the center of the page or at the bottom of the page to bring up the Reading Tools menu. This menu does all kinds of nifty things—hops to the interactive table of contents, searches the book, changes the font size and brightness, and more.
Tip
You may need a bit of practice bringing up the Reading Menu. If you tap too far to the right, you’ll go forward one page, and too much to the left you’ll go back a page. Aim for square in the middle.
Here are the six reading tools:
Contents. Jumps you back to the book’s table of contents, with the current chapter highlighted. It’s interactive—tap a listing in the table and you’ll jump to that location in the book. Separate tabs show notes, highlights, and bookmarks and let you jump to them as well.
Find. Pops up a search box and keyboard so you can search the book you’re reading.
Share. Tap here and you can share information about the book with others—recommend it, review it, “Like” it on Facebook, and more. See Sharing Your Reading for details.
Text. Lets you make the text just right—not too large, not too small, just the right font, and with just the right background color. See Changing the Text and Display for details.
Brightness. Tap to launch a slider that lets you adjust the screen brightness. Slide it to the right to make the screen brighter, and to the left to make it dimmer.
Discover. Tap here to see books related to the one you’re reading—for example, books by the same author. You’ll often see unrelated books as well, such as the B&N Top 100. As with everywhere else on the NOOK, tap a book to see details.
Note
If you download a book to your PC or Mac, and then transfer it to your NOOK (Transferring Files to Your NOOK Tablet), the Discover feature may not be available; in that case the icon will appear dimmed.
Look at the top-right corner of the screen when you bring up the Reading Tools menu, and you see a gray NOOK icon. That’s for creating a bookmark. Tap the icon: It turns blue and elongates. You’ve just added a bookmark, and it stays there even when the Reading Tools menu disappears. Tap it again and it disappears—you’ve just deleted a bookmark.
Just above the Reading Tools menu, you’ll find some handy tools for navigating through the book. Tap the “Go to Page” button, and a screen appears that lets you type in a page number to head to. Tap in the page number, tap Go, and off you go.
After you do that, to get to the page you were just reading, tap the Go Back button.
There’s also a nifty slider that shows you your current location in the book, including the chapter number and title, and how many pages remain in the chapter. Drag the slider to move forward or back in the book. As you drag the slider, the page number and chapter number and title appear to show the location you’re moving through.
