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 [company]Google[/company] 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, “lets you easily skim an entire book, browse all your notes and highlights, and quickly jump back and forth between different spots.” So, for example, a user could jump between recipes in a cookbook “using new quick bookmarks” or use “skim mode” to browse through a travel guide.

“Skim mode” in the Google…