“Nook for PC” and “Kindle for PC” – how to copy text
Last Christmas I was fortunate enough to receive a Nook reader, the device sold by Barnes and Noble which competes directly with the industry-leading device, Kindle. Not only did I begin reading books on my Nook device, I also downloaded the Barnes and Noble reader software for my PC, later retitled in a later release, “Nook for PC”. During this most recent software update, I experienced a number of changes in the software — mostly positive.
BUT… I have found that their new PC reader software no longer allows copying of text!! In the past, you could select a sentence or passage that stood out to you, press CTRL+C to copy the text, and paste it where else you like.
If I am reading through a book and find a particularly good/memorable passage (as is happening often as I read through Stuart Vyse’s Going Broke: Why Americans Can’t Hold On To Their Money right now), I am not able to copy a sentence or paragraph and drop it into a word document, blog post, etc. for further reference. In the past, this was possible, but it appears they have removed the technology from the reader. No doubt this was due to publisher concerns around plagiarism, copyright issues, etc. Though I don’t own a Kindle, out of curiosity as to how this works in the Kindle for PC software tool, I downloaded that software, downloaded a free book, and encountered the same thing – no “copy” function on any of the menus, available via right click after selecting text, and no CTRL+C functionality available.
So what’s the solution?
In both the Nook for PC and the Kindle for PC software, a “search” feature of some kind exists on the menu that appears after you select text from a page and right-click on the selected text. In Nook for PC, it gives you the right-click menu option to search Wikipedia for that text, and in the case of Kindle for PC, without even having to right-click it pops up a menu after you select the text which includes the option of searching the book itself for instances of the text you have selected. Selecting either function results in the corresponding search being triggered, and viewing of those search words (or paragraph as it may be) in the search tool. So, while this solution lacks elegance, these search features do get the text, long as the passage may be, into a editable, copyable input box in your browser (the Wikipedia search in Nook for PC) or into an editable field (search box in Kindle for PC).
After the search has been triggered, you simply go to the field where the now-editable search text is located, select the text, click CTRL+C and your text is now in the clipboard, ready for pasting into a blog posting, word document or whatever. As always, make sure not to violate copyright laws and to follow proper procedures for citing the source of the quoted text.
Barnes & Noble’s nook device – proposals for better lending
Barnes & Noble’s highly anticipated ebook reader, the nook, boasts a variety of features that B&N says makes it superior to the Kindle device made by Amazon.
I received one as a gift for Christmas, and while I am still awaiting its arrival, I’ve done a good bit of reading about the device. Overall, it sounds like a great device but like any 1st/2nd generation product, the nook should be expected to have its share of imperfections and unfinished features.
One of these unfinished features is the nook’s ability to lend out books, but only temporarily, to other Nook users. According to the clarification from B&N as stated on the nook blog nookTalk (on Twitter as @nookTalk, “the books you buy for your nook can only be loaned out ONCE for fourteen days.” This “one-lend-only-and-just-for-14-days” feature, in my mind, makes this feature more hype than substance. How often do you borrow a book from a friend and return it 14 days later? And how often have you lent out a book multiple times to various friends you have who you think should read the book, or read enough of it to be interested in purchasing it themselves? How frustrating would it be to only have the ability to lend the book out one time, and never again?
Admittedly, the nook’s ability to lend books at all is better than the Amazon Kindle’s lack of a lending feature. And I imagine there’s plenty of business, partner/copyright, and technology issues at play here that prevented a more relaxed lending feature at this time, but here is my question: why not allow the process of lending an e-book to occur in essentially the same way as the lending of physical books works?
Here are my specific suggestions on how to loosen up the technology to better emulate real-life book lending, while also (somewhat) protecting content creators’ copyrights, their royalties, and the publisher’s/distributors’ revenues. These suggestions could be implemented by any of the e-book / e-reader companies:
- Extend the time limit of lending. This is an obvious problem; I would propose they extend the time limit at least to 60 or 90 days, but preferably to something closer to 6 months. This only makes sense, as a physical book lent out can sometimes stay gone for a while.
- Do not allow the owner of the e-book to read it while it is “lent out”. This may be disappointing to e-book users, but it does accurately match what happens with physical books and thereby provides some protection to content providers’ copyright and distribution concerns.
- Implement automatic reversion of the reading rights. As a way of preventing the scenario we have all experienced where you lend a book to someone, but it turns out to be a gift to them (because they never return it!), the devices would ideally revoke reading rights to the book on the lender’s device/account after the lending time limit is up, and return those reading rights to the e-book owner. Update: I heard from @nookTalk shortly after publishing this post that this feature “should work” currently. Thanks for the info!
- Allow for upgrades / “full license” purchase of ebooks to remove or relax restrictions – Apple has already done a similar thing with their music, often offering a non-protected version of songs on iTunes for $1.29 instead of the standard $0.99 per song price, for example. So, an e-book that normally sells for $9.99 could sell for, say, $14.99 in an unprotected format that might have relaxed lending restrictions (even longer lending, lending to more than 2 or 3 people and simultaneous access to the book yourself, etc.) This would calm the critics and ensure that people could have more flexibility if they paid more for the e-book– probably something closer to the cost of what the physical book would cost in the store.
- Implement a “lending friends” list – Thankfully, my understanding is that the nook does allow multiple accounts (I’m not sure of how many, but I am sure it’s comparable to the Kindle’s 6 account limit) to have access to the same books. This should assuage any concerns about members of the same household being able to access each other’s books. But my LENDING friends list that I suggest essentially works the same way, except that the list of accounts can be larger and is used for the lending feature only, not for unlimited normal access to your library. This again would somewhat of a limiting feature to users, but would be a mitigating protection for B&N and publishers. If you, for example, can only lend any of your books to someone on a list of 10 different for example, this will limit the odds that lending will be so easy as for some to avoid purchasing books altogether.
I am hopeful — and confident — that as the e-book technology improves and technology creators, authors, and publishers come to grips with the radical changes that will be coming to their industry with the rise of e-books, there will also be an eventual improvement and standardization of features such as e-book lending across all devices. Hopefully these suggestions here will help to kick-start the discussion.
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