E-reader analytics: "Your E-Book Is Reading You"

Social Reading I feel will get really big, and although the best part of this is the communities it can create, the data it provides to the author/publisher will be big, too.

This is something that will get more sophisticated I'm sure. Thanks for the link. A really good read

Matthew (Turndog Millionaire)

From a WaPo article about the information e-readers collect about readers and how that information might be used:

Some authors welcome the prospect [...] Others worry that a data-driven approach could hinder the kinds of creative risks that produce great literature.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, most of the examples of how this information could be used are, IMO, catastrophically awful. For example:

(1) Choose-your-own-adventure novels, in which the reader can pick the winning love interest, how the protagonist solves mysteries, etc.

(2) Crafting artificial "hits" based on the widest possible audience, e.g. publishing books that fit all of the widest possible market niches or that attempt to be all things to all people. Sort of like terrible Hollywood movies.

(3) The publication of short, superficial nonfiction rather than, you know, non-fiction with depth.

However. If this aggregated data was readily available to authors and small publishers, along with user-friendly analytics software, and if it was also available to readers, in the form of a Netflix-like algorithm that could predict what those readers would enjoy without them having to wade through the morass of the bookstore, there's a lot of potential here. Particularly if economic events in the publishing and bookselling industries led to the resurgence of the medium-sized publisher. I'd also like to see small publishers get together and act like city-states, sharing resources and information, but that's neither here nor there.

This article really makes me want to smash Amazon with the anti-trust hammer.

ETA: In sum, if used well, this information could lead to greater diversity in publishing, more people reading more books, and cheaper marketing (ergo, less risk in the industry ---> more books being published). Used poorly, it could lead to less diversity in publishing, fewer people reading fewer books, and all marketing resources being placed into fewer baskets.

In Switzerland, it is against the law to store information about clients like that, so it would be a big problem internationally.

Also, Amazon usually recommends stuff to me based on other books I've bought, but very often I try to figure out why those books are recommended to me. It appears that some authors are using others' book titles to tag their own products - thus the recs that look out of place.

I hate it when amazon has a list of recs, or when I buy a book it says something like 'if you enjoyed this, you should check out that as well'. It feels very intrusive.

Why is it important for an author (or the publisher) to know the demographic of his / her readers? Isn't it enough to actually have readers?.

Yorkist, I'd be grateful if you'd reduce the amount of text quoted: a sentence or two is generally acceptable. Thanks.

I'm going to merge this thread with one in the Round Table. They're both about the same article, and this will get a bigger, more diverse audience out there. Hang onto your hats...

Shortened it - did the best I could. The article doesn't contain a singular strong thesis that presents both sides of the argument (at least, one that I could find).

I've done a bit of data analysis work. Data is sifted by the aggregate - the information about a single reader (or any other data point) is almost useless. It creeps me out a lot less as long as I'm just a number to the analytics engine. MMV.

From a reader perspective, I don't see this as very different from Netflix or iTunes genius. While I have a much more personal relationship with books, well - when it comes to business, I'm one of those efficiency-types. Our hearts are not nearly as frozen as most people think.

Lexxie said:

Also, Amazon usually recommends stuff to me based on other books I've bought, but very often I try to figure out why those books are recommended to me. It appears that some authors are using others' book titles to tag their own products - thus the recs that look out of place.

Click to expand...

Is that what's happening? I haven't bought anything with my own account for a while, but last I checked, when I bought a book about, for example, Elizabeth I, Amazon recommended every other book about Elizabeth I, as well as every other book by Allison Weir. Amazon's system is not smart enough to extrapolate that I also like Michelle Moran's novels.

So, as long as a recommendation system exists (and I'm the sort of person who still chats up small bookshop owners for recommendations, FWIW), I'd rather it be a good recommendation system than a poor one.

Why is it important for an author (or the publisher) to know the demographic of his / her readers?

Click to expand...

Better, less expensive, and more effective marketing. *puts on business school hat* The publishing industry seems to be in a state of flux right now. Demographic info is important (from a marketing perspective), but will become less so as time goes on. I'm pretty sure that one can extrapolate much more about a reader from the books s/he reads and enjoys (and the relationships between those books) than variables like their gender and geographic region.

Though demographic info will likely always be useful for some choices - like translations.

Analytics can be used very well, or very poorly. I have a feeling it's going to be used poorly before getting better.

Turndog-Millionaire said:

Social Reading I feel will get really big, and although the best part of this is the communities it can create, the data it provides to the author/publisher will be big, too.

Click to expand...

This is definitely happening on facebook. Somehow the same book will show up on a bunch of unrelated friends' reading lists.

Anyway, market/buyer gaps annoy me on a personal level, and I'm concerned that people read less than they used to because the current marketing system doesn't match well with technological changes. I'd rather books claim a larger entertainment market share than they do right now. I'd also rather outstanding books that don't have a preexisting market niche (for example, because they're too experimental, or they're a genre bender, or whathaveyou) have more of a chance.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Well, the choose-your-own books monitor things closely, but if I read that article right, Amazon and others also keep a close eye on what people are doing. They know how fast people read books and what passages they highlight, whether people abandon books and at what point, whether people read one book at a time or skip around. And of course the obvious things like knowing exactly what books people are buying.

It's uncomfortable, to me, anyway.

Click to expand...

What's most uncomfortable to me is that only Amazon has access to this information, and that they will use it in furtherance of their goal to take over the publishing industry. (Their "revolutionary discovery" that literary fiction readers tend to read more slowly and hop from book to book gave me the giggles, btw.) So I'm pretty excited about what Copia is doing - publishers, whether small or large, need all the help they can get.

I'll really get creeped out when there's some sort of AI robotics that lets me know that because I just watched a documentary on the whaling industry, I feel like reading Moby Dick. *shudders* That'll be my breaking point.

Hmm... I think companies, like Amazon, that try to analyze this type of information will run into problems. I'm not sure reading is logical enough - sometimes it's emotion based. Sometimes it's mood based. For me, I don't buy books for myself on Amazon, but I do buy gifts and have them shipped to me so I can wrap/distribute them myself. Thus, their metrics on my reading habits would be all over the place.

I don't use ebooks at all, but if I did, I'd feel the practice of tracking it intrusive, if I understand the article correctly.

Lexxie said:

Why is it important for an author (or the publisher) to know the demographic of his / her readers? Isn't it enough to actually have readers?.

Click to expand...

I am not saying all of this as an advocate, only as an explanation of what is already on its way.

Demographics are important to a point, but aggregate usage data is amazingly valuable and that is what they are talking about in this article. We are still a ways away from really advanced data collection on book reading (scribbles and highlighting are way too subjective) but we are headed that way.

As an example, if you published two successful books that sold millions of copies and Book A sold 500K more copies than book B:
With traditional data, you know people preferred A over B. This is the extent of your knowledge. There are too many variables to know anything other than people preferred A over B.
With advanced data analysis you could know if people highlighted the funny passages of book A more often then the sad passages of book B. Or if people rarely stopped before a chapter or scene that your heroine was in for Book A. Or if people stopped reading book B at Chapter 18, and Chapter 18 is where the IED went off and things turned wet and gristly.

This means that you could tailor your book to target the same market share as Book A received. It means you would know if that sequel involving the MCs brother was a good idea because you would have feedback on how people reacted to him in the first book. You would know if you should cut back on the gore and violence, or increase the amount of sex scenes (my vote!), or make your MCs shorter, taller, skinnier, chubbier. Because you would have actual data on how the reader reacted.

If writing is someone's livelihood then knowing what is marketable is essential. And even if an author just enjoys the craft, or considers it art, well... even artists have to eat. And more readers = more success.

I am not saying this will all be used for good, as Yorkist said. But it could be invaluable to people who think of market share as much as their plot.

It would be really interesting if book writing and reading started towards A/B testing, though Beta readers sort of provide that service now. What if you could adjust your book minutely on the fly? When would a book be considered published? When you first released it, or stopped making changes? Would you ever be able to stop making changes? Hmmm... definitely an interesting rabbit hole.

The only thing that shocks me is how long it took for this to break. I've been pretty much expecting Amazon to track everything about everything I read (including time and how far I got, when I stopped, etc.) for every book I read since I got my Kindle a few years ago. It only makes sense, and if they can make that data available to publishers to help improve the entire industry... awesome.

Yorkist said:

Shortened it - did the best I could.

Click to expand...

I've shortened it more, and have got it down to the two sentences I suggested was acceptable.

This isn't optional, Yorkist: it's a requirement. Please make sure you don't over-quote again. Thanks.

Better, less expensive, and more effective marketing. *puts on business school hat* The publishing industry seems to be in a state of flux right now.

Click to expand...

It always is.

What's most uncomfortable to me is that only Amazon has access to this information

Click to expand...

Would you rather they sold this information on to other companies? There are laws about that, and I'm not convinced that they could.

WittyandorIronic said:

It would be really interesting if book writing and reading started towards A/B testing, though Beta readers sort of provide that service now. What if you could adjust your book minutely on the fly? When would a book be considered published? When you first released it, or stopped making changes? Would you ever be able to stop making changes? Hmmm... definitely an interesting rabbit hole.

Click to expand...

Actually, one author I have read about has used reviews in order to do this, and published her book again with a different ending due to some fans not liking the first ending she provided. I would feel a little cheated then, as a reader. I would think that once the story is told and published, that is it, unless even as book A is published it states that a book A 1.1 with an alternate ending will be published as well.

Yorkist said:

Is that what's happening? I haven't bought anything with my own account for a while, but last I checked, when I bought a book about, for example, Elizabeth I, Amazon recommended every other book about Elizabeth I, as well as every other book by Allison Weir. Amazon's system is not smart enough to extrapolate that I also like Michelle Moran's novels.

Click to expand...

I think Amazon is fairly confused about me... I read lots of classics, like the Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, Evelina, Humphry Clinker etc. And I also read a lot of different genres in contemporary fiction, both YA and adult. I am kind of happy it's not too easy to peg me down, though.

Lexxie said:

Actually, one author I have read about has used reviews in order to do this, and published her book again with a different ending due to some fans not liking the first ending she provided.

Click to expand...

Rather like going back and revising so Han didn't shoot first. *grumbles* Maybe I'm old and cranky (true) but the idea of writing to a set of readers bothers me. An author can't possibly please everyone reading her/his book, and I worry it may be damaging to the creative process to attempt it. I couldn't attempt it; I already have enough second guessing going on, just trying to please myself and, hopefully, one or two others Out There.

Wouldn't writing to marketable criteria add another filter between the author's imagination and the page?

Are Amazon's histories of what customers bought similar to the library lists of what books were checked out by an individual? There was a good reason that librarians deleted those "customer histories" in the first decade of this new century. Can we expect the same sort of customer protection from Amazon?