Such readers are likely to want to search for specific information or browse through parts of the work and may have no desire to digest the entire corpus. They may expect to skim or skip over much text that is of little immediate interest. Hypertext facilitates browsing and information retrieval by minimizing readers' contact with text that's irrelevant to their current needs. There's little tolerance for having to push aside writing that doesn't contribute effectively to the current state of a story's unfolding. Distracting navigational complications can tarnish the reader's memory of a poem, leaving a stain that isn't erased by the eventual arrival at some rewarding textual destination.
Every navigational choice has to count.
Yet applying the technology to literature doesn't alter one of the primary goals of hypertext, which is to put at the reader's fingertips the text that will be of most interest at any given moment. On the contrary, the demands of literary hypertext compel us to keep this goal more clearly in view. In nonfiction hypertexts, the integrity of the overall reading may not be paramount, as it is in hypertext literature. The specific nuggets of information that the reader comes away with may be more important than the details of how they where obtained. Yet an artfully shaped reading is always likely to be more rewarding, more efficient, and more memorable than a clumsily structured one, even if both encompass most of the same text.