E-Books That Read You

An anonymous reader writes "Internet users have sadly grown used to having their every click and scroll measured by advertisers and content providers seeking to squeeze every last ounce of attention out of them. Now, it seems such data gathering is spreading into your favorite novels as well. The NY Times profiles several companies trying to collect data on how people read ebooks. Quoting: 'Scribd is just beginning to analyze the data from its subscribers. Some general insights: The longer a mystery novel is, the more likely readers are to jump to the end to see who done it. People are more likely to finish biographies than business titles, but a chapter of a yoga book is all they need. They speed through romances faster than religious titles, and erotica fastest of all. At Oyster, a top book is What Women Want, promoted as a work that "brings you inside a woman's head so you can learn how to blow her mind." Everyone who starts it finishes it. On the other hand, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s The Cycles of American History blows no minds: fewer than 1 percent of the readers who start it get to the end. Oyster data shows that readers are 25 percent more likely to finish books that are broken up into shorter chapters. That is an inevitable consequence of people reading in short sessions during the day on an iPhone.'"

Comments

Soft sore porn vs a tome

[tomhath]

At Oyster, a top book is What Women Want, promoted as a work that "brings you inside a woman's head so you can learn how to blow her mind." Everyone who starts it finishes it. On the other hand, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s The Cycles of American History blows no minds: fewer than 1 percent of the readers who start it get to the end.

200 pages of soft core porn are more likely to be read than 500 pages of history. Who knew?

Re:Soft sore porn vs a tome

[Chexum]

31 pages. Far from 200. It's practically ending before you realize it. If this is coming from an "eat-all-you-can" monthly subscription ebook store, I would guess more people would go for lighter works to get more out of their money. So the data they tell us is practically useless to predict what is really wanted in a book.

Re:It's finally happened.

[Runaway1956]

Fight back with torrents. Calibre doesn't care what format the ebook is in, and it certainly doesn't report back to Amazon or anyone else. To document my reading habits, you'll have to root my machine. To even find out what I read, you'll have to at least get a look at my hard drive.