Monday, July 7, 2014

E-Books Rat Out How Much of a Books is Actually Read

Last week the Wall Street Journal featured an article titled, "Summer's Most Unread Books", speculating on which page e-books are abandoned. The speculation is based on information presented on the Amazon highlighted passages feature. The author's theory goes like this - the farther the most popular highlighted passages are in the book, the more likely is that people have read more of the book. 

Or it could mean that the book is so good -- especially a fast paced novel -- readers were too wrapped up in it to highlight anything. I almost never highlight anything in fiction anyway. 

The author does acknowledge the flaws in the system and states that this isn't scientific and it's just for entertainment, but my Kindle software tells me the percentage of a book I've finished so far. It isn't that far of a leap to assume that Amazon in all of it's quest for information has that data as well and is aggregating and analyzing as I type this. 

If the information would help Amazon sell books, undoubtedly they would have already incorporated it into their book listings, but perhaps too many books go unfinished and they don't want to remind people of that when they are in book buying mode. 

I'm not sure what it all means -- other than another form of privacy that will probable be gone -- but I can't get this article out of my head. 

You can read the article here. 

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