{"id":8721,"date":"2010-08-21T13:59:05","date_gmt":"2010-08-21T13:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/?p=8721"},"modified":"2025-04-21T15:27:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T15:27:06","slug":"ebook-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/2010\/08\/ebook-data\/","title":{"rendered":"ebook data?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div><p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/zachbeauvaiscom.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/11\/268f8-3470579652_ff14965e31_m.jpg\" alt=\"Wooden Kindle\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" \/>Ebooks are doing rather well, with Amazon announcing them outselling their <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130531063844\/http:\/\/www.wired.com\/gadgetlab\/2010\/07\/amazon-e-books-outsell-hardcovers\/\">print counterparts<\/a> in bestsellers lists. I&#8217;ve enjoyed using the Kindle app for various reasons including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Instant purchase\/download (even Amazon Prime can take too long!)<\/li>\n<li>One device, not many books<\/li>\n<li>Reading in the dark (on the iPad, any way)<\/li>\n<li>Searching and smart(ish) bookmarking<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now I&#8217;d love to see various improvements, and a novel things I&#8217;m not sure I have a fully-formed idea around yet (I&#8217;d like new things with the power of computing devices, but I&#8217;m not sure yet what they might be.)<\/p>\n<p>But something has interested me a lot with a piece I read in ReadWriteWeb. The piece talks about various ways in which ebooks are better than paper ones, and it mentions &#8220;social highlighting&#8221;, that is: the ability to share electronically highlighted text and notes. Richard MacManus goes on to suggest better features and improvements, and I&#8217;m fully in agreement here: the social aspect of ebooks has yet to be developed much at all, it seems.<\/p>\n<p>Now, these social tools could follow a very predictable path, taking in the evolution of social tools elsewhere: multi-site sharing options, tweets, facebook connecting (I &#8220;like&#8221; the Kite Runner) etc. No doubt they will. But the thing that really grabbed me was the little gem of a site showing the most highlighted passages in the Kindle bookstore. This means that Amazon knows what&#8217;s being highlighted. It means\u2014I&#8217;m just guessing here\u2014that publishers could begin to know how much books are actually read. You know that copy of A Brief History of Time you bought?<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a very straightforward metric, but one that&#8217;s immediately useful to amazon, publishers, and authors. What else could be gleaned from vey simple and anonymous data like these?<\/p>\n<p>What other data are Amazon using, and what else could be done with finer-grained data from users? Imagine language studies over tricky phrases in intralingual dictionaries! Finally, how can this be turned directly over to consumers?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d love to know my own reading patterns, which words and phrases I highlight.<\/p>\n<p><em>photo: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/oskay\/3470579652\/\">&#8220;kindling&#8221;<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/oskay\/\">oskay<\/a> via flickr. <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/deed.en\">CC by<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ebooks are doing rather well, with Amazon announcing them outselling their print counterparts in bestsellers lists. I&#8217;ve enjoyed using the Kindle app for various reasons including: Instant purchase\/download (even Amazon Prime can take too long!) One device, not many books Reading in the dark (on the iPad, any way) Searching and smart(ish) bookmarking Now I&#8217;d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8721"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13393,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8721\/revisions\/13393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zachbeauvais.com\/host\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}