How Much Of A Book Do You Actually Read?

In the age of Big Data, publishers increasingly want to know just how much of a book purchasers actually read, or so says a story in the March 15 New York Times.

Amazon, Apple and other purveyors of e-books apparently already have a lot of such data when it comes to people reading books in electronic form, but that is roughly only about 25% of the market and readership of e-books is, at best, leveling off at present, various reports have suggested. Readership data for books on paper is another matter.

To fill the gap, The Times reported, a London-based firm named Jellybooks has a device readers can use, in exchange for free books, to track their reading activity and transmit that data to the company, which then provides it to participating publishing companies, presumably for a fee.



In an early trial, Jellybooks collected data on 200 books for seven publishing companies and found that men give up on books they don't like after reading only 30 to 50 pages whereas women read 50 to 100 pages before giving up.

Interestingly, only 5 percent of the books tested were finished by more than 75 percent of readers with books about business having a particularly low completion rate. But people often don't read non-fiction books cover-to-cover.

"Successful" U.S. novels were completed by about 60 percent of those who started them while "unsuccessful" published novels were completed by only 20 percent. When publishers scaled back marketing efforts on books, 80 percent of readers gave up after only about five chapters.

So there's yet another set of data that suggests people don't really think for themselves -- they need someone else, even if it is just commercial propaganda, to tell them what to do. If a marketing effort tells them what they are reading is wonderful, they will keep at it. Otherwise, their attention apparently wanders.

Another thing Jellybooks discovered is that books sometimes find appeal outside their target audience. For instance, the article said, one of the novels that the company tested was written for teenagers, but proved surprisingly popular with adults.

This was a surprise?  I guess publishers haven't been following the boom in Young Adult literature and reports that many readers of such books are actually older adults.  See, for instance, my earlier post on this topic.