E-book Intelligence

It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: “Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.” And on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first “Hunger Games” book is to download the next one.

In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but also how intensely they read them. Does it feel like you’ve died and gone to market intelligence heaven? Perhaps. But there have been some raised eyebrows recently over the extent of information that today’s e-book platforms have potentially been accumulating on our reading habits. For centuries, reading has largely been a solitary and private act, an intimate exchange between the reader and the words on the page. But the rise of digital books has prompted a profound shift in the way we read, transforming the activity into something measurable and quasi-public.

Some privacy watchdogs argue that e-book users should be protected from having their digital reading habits recorded. “There’s a societal ideal that what you read is nobody else’s business,” says Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates for consumer rights and privacy. “E-reader technology presents significant new threats to reader privacy. E-readers possess the ability to report back (upload) substantial information about their users’ reading habits and locations to the corporations that sell them. And yet none of the major e-reader manufacturers have explained to consumers in clear, unequivocal language what data is being collected about them and why,” from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has collated a guide to the privacy policies of certain e-readers. In it, they’ve examined the policies of Google Books, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble, Nook, Kobo, Sony, Overdrive, Indiebound, Internet Archive, and Adobe Content Server for answers to the following questions:

• Can they keep track of searches for books?
• Can they monitor what you’re reading and how you’re reading it after purchase, and link that information back to you? Can they do that when the e-book is obtained elsewhere?
• What compatibility does the device have with books not purchased from an associated e book store?
• Do they keep a record of book purchases? Can they track book purchases or acquisitions made from other sources?
• With whom can they share the information collected in non-aggregated form?
• Do they have mechanisms for customers to access, correct, or delete the information?
• Can they share information outside the company without the customer’s consent?
The major new players in e-book publishing—Amazon, Apple and Google—can easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading them and which search terms they use to find books. Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. Retailers and some publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books.

“With digital content we have the ability all of a sudden to glean new insights into our customers,” says Todd Humphrey, Kobo’s executive vice president of business development. “How often do they pick up and engage with a book? How many pages do they read an hour? How long does it take to read a book? And through bookmarking, people tell us where they stop. If we were to dive into that reader space, we could see they picked up a book, read the first five pages in five hours, then never picked up and engaged with the book again. What does that say, if 90% of readers stop after chapter five? It certainly provides insight for the publisher and the author.”

Barnes & Noble, which accounts for 25% to 30% of the e-book market through its Nook e-reader, has recently started studying customers’ digital reading behaviour. They have determined, through analyzing Nook data, that Non-fiction books tend to be read in fits and starts, while novels are generally read straight through, and that Non-fiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier. Those insights are already shaping the types of books that Barnes & Noble sells on its Nook. When the data showed that Nook readers routinely quit long works of Non-fiction, the company began looking for ways to engage readers in Non-fiction and long-form journalism. They decided to launch “Nook Snaps,” short works on topics ranging from weight loss and religion to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Along the same lines, we had major South African Publisher NB launch “Tafelberg Short” under its Tafelberg imprint towards the end of last year, and another, smaller publishing venture “Mampoer Shorts” doing the same.

But this is only the beginning. At a time when traditional publishers are losing ground to giants like Amazon and Apple, better analytics seem to offer tantalizing possibilities. Amazon, in particular, has an advantage in this field—it’s both a retailer and a publisher, which puts the company in a unique position to use the data it gathers on its customers’ reading habits.

Tim Coates, founder of new online e-book store Bilbary, which has launched in the US and will make its debut in the UK in 2013, is adamant that individual data should never be shared. “In terms of what we share with publishers, it’s always aggregated, [for example] that a lot of students in southern Californian universities are using this book, as opposed to this one … Publishers find it useful, absolutely.” He continues; “You can understand what books are selling, where in the world, how fast people are reading them, how long it takes them to finish, where they accelerate or decelerate through a book – all of that at the end provides the publisher with pretty interesting insights to work with the author, on the style of the book and the story, and from a publishing perspective how to market based on where it is selling. At the end of the day, it does allow publishers more information than they would have if they just put the book on a shelf,” he says. “It is going to be interesting to watch how it evolves over time. It is more power to the people who are essentially telling publishers and authors what it is they want to read.”

A logical next step would be to create new laws around e-book privacy, and perhaps the Bill of Human rights should include the “Right to read” – where individuals have the right to read freely, without surveilance or data gathered about their reading habits. California, in the US, has taken some steps in this direction, they’ve passed a “reader privacy act” that grants more robust legal protection to the records of e-book consumers. Will South Africa – with one of the best legal systems (albeit not enforced) in the world, be next?

Nicolene Finlayson