Google Play Books’ New Reading Mode Lets You Browse and Skim Nonfiction Ebooks Faster

The digital format works a lot better for some kinds of books than others. For straight-text fiction, it's perfect - as evidenced by 2013 sales figures showing that ebooks now account for nearly 40 percent of adult fiction sales. When it comes to nonfiction, though - cookbooks, atlases, travel guides and so on - ebooks haven't done as well.

Now Google is taking a small step to change that: On Thursday the company announced a new nonfiction reading mode for its Google Play Books app. The new feature, which is only available on Android for now,