How far into a book do people read--by genre.

[BearMountainBooks]

Article in the NY Times about people buying the popular books and how few of them actually read those books and a breakdown by genre of what does get read and which countries:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/ar...=fb-share&_r=0

I know when I first got into publishing I was shocked at the difference between SELLING a book versus whether or not people READ the book!

[Lin2412]

the release of the Hollywood adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel “Gone Girl” propelled the book onto best-seller lists in several countries around the world. Millions of people bought it, but how many of them actually read it from cover to cover?

In Britain, for instance, “Gone Girl” was Kobo’s third best-selling title, but only 46 percent of the readers who purchased the book made it to the end.

I'm really curious about Kobo's way of getting their statistics. Like, should I tap it at the end of the book, just to have it credited as "finished"?

[Lin2412]

(Anyway those people are missing out if they haven't read Gone Girl to the very end. It's a wonderfully written book.) Anyway, I just saw Romance and Fantasy are the top genres in North America, no doubt about that one. Haha.

[SteveEisenberg]

When I was a kid, I took out a dozen books from the library and finished maybe two.

But lately I'm finishing more than 50 percent.

Re nonfiction having a lower completion rate, I'm wondering if they are grouping books made to be read start to end, like biographies, with textbooks.

I'd be interested to see a more detailed breakdown. Grouping Amish romance with 50 Shades doesn't make sense to me.

[eschwartz]

I would like to see decent proof that they know what they are talking about.

TBH, I would not be surprised if Amazon thinks I rarely read at all -- I have not been doing a very good job of connecting according to their schedule, I strip the EndActions and rarely go past the badly-estimated last words, so I hope that isn't how they track it and I often finish books while offline and then shuffle them off my Kindle.

Since it is all managed via calibre and a couple annotations-managing scripts, I find that my main reason to actually connect is in order to download new purchases.


I have a nagging suspicion that I am not the only heavy reader who acts this way...
I know some people even convert all their books first, even if purchased from their vendor's storefront anyway -- so they wouldn't show p as the same book!

[theducks]

Why is it France with the best? Are they just more careful when they buy books, so those that sell actually get read.

And if find it ironic that Religion in Italy is where it is. The Pope must be fuming

I will admit, some of my purchases don't get read. But then, I buy Baen Bundles (6+ books for the price of 3), so if there is one not to my taste, so what. I still saved $

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I would like to see decent proof that they know what they are talking about.

TBH, I would not be surprised if Amazon thinks I rarely read at all -- I have not been doing a very good job of connecting according to their schedule, I strip the EndActions and rarely go past the badly-estimated last words, so I hope that isn't how they track it and I often finish books while offline and then shuffle them off my Kindle.

Since it is all managed via calibre and a couple annotations-managing scripts, I find that my main reason to actually connect is in order to download new purchases.


I have a nagging suspicion that I am not the only heavy reader who acts this way...
I know some people even convert all their books first, even if purchased from their vendor's storefront anyway -- so they wouldn't show p as the same book!

True, but the average reader probably downloads and reads. The average reader doesn't know about DRM, care or go through half the things we do on Mobilereads!!!

I'm sure there is room for error. I didn't mean it as absolute proof of anything. I just found it very interesting. One of the Kobo marketing guys did an article a while back on how right around 1 percent or less of the freebies that are downloaded are read (I can't remember the exact percentage, but it was very, very low). Maybe I can find that article.

[Catlady]

I buy a lot of books that don't get read (though I plan to read them), I could probably count on one hand the number of freebies I've read, but if I start a book, I finish it.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

True, but the average reader probably downloads and reads. The average reader doesn't know about DRM, care or go through half the things we do on Mobilereads!!!

I'm sure there is room for error. I didn't mean it as absolute proof of anything. I just found it very interesting. One of the Kobo marketing guys did an article a while back on how right around 1 percent or less of the freebies that are downloaded are read (I can't remember the exact percentage, but it was very, very low). Maybe I can find that article.

Well, yeah -- but who do you think buy more books?

Suffice it to say, I can see a significant margin of error there...

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Well, yeah -- but who do you think buy more books?

Suffice it to say, I can see a significant margin of error there...

Well, maybe they need to say "of the readers we can track this is what they do."

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Well, maybe they need to say "of the readers we can track this is what they do."

How can they tell who is genuinely not reading and who is reading off the record?

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I would like to see decent proof that they know what they are talking about.

They sell both ebooks and ereaders. Their ereaders and ereading software has the ability to synchronize data. They are in a far better position to judge how much of what is being read by looking at their data than we are without their data.

Are there issues with their data? Probably. Are these uncertainties quantifiable? In some cases, yes and in other cases no. They're going to have a hard time quantifying the uncertainties introduced by people who never connect to their services, but that won't matter to Kobo very much anyhow since such data is collected for their own marketing purposes. Figuring out how many people completed a book should be trivial, even ignoring the content, since they can examine the distribution for the last position read across all readers.

That is based upon data that we know Kobo collects. The reality is that they could collect much more data if they really wanted to. While there are likely limits to what they do collect, simply to protect the reputation of their company, they could tell how much attention a given reader gives to a given page. Consider readers collectively, on devices with displays and display settings, and they can probably isolate the paragraphs garnering people's attention or causing them to set down the book.

Is that proof that Kobo knows what they're talking about? Of course not. Yet it does point out that Kobo has the means of figuring out how many people finished a book and that they can probably do so with reasonable accuracy, at least for Kobo customers.

[JSWolf]

Kobo does not know what I've read and what I have not. I've not turned on the WiFi on the H2O since I download firmware version 3.12.0. So if what I've read is not stored on the Reader to be sent next time the WiFi is on, then what I have read will never be sent. Also, after I read a book and I've highlighted errors to be corrected, the book is no longer marked as finished so if that stat was sent to Kobo, they'd take it as unfinished which is not the case.

[Rizla]

Interesting data and what I'd expect more or less. Another way of looking at the data is that many of the books that reach readers are not that good.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Kobo does not know what I've read and what I have not. I've not turned on the WiFi on the H2O since I download firmware version 3.12.0. So if what I've read is not stored on the Reader to be sent next time the WiFi is on, then what I have read will never be sent. Also, after I read a book and I've highlighted errors to be corrected, the book is no longer marked as finished so if that stat was sent to Kobo, they'd take it as unfinished which is not the case.

Except of course, that isn't how the stats are recorded on the device. If you open a book, it is marked as open and "book started" and "book opened" events are recorded. If you close the book, a "book closed" event is recorded and when you reopen it to read, the count of the "book opened" event is incremented. If you finish the book, it is marked as finished and a "book finished" event is added and the count of the "book finished" event is incremented. If you open a finished book, the counts for the "book started" and "book opened" events are incremented and the book is marked as opened.

So, if Kobo can see the stats, then it can work out what has been finished (read to the end or marked as finished) and how many times. For the stats mentioned in the article, the existence of the "book finished" event is enough to count the book as finished. And because Kobo can only use the stats for the books purchased from them and read on their devices/apps and synced, then I hope is only counting the copies started.

Note: My description above is from examining the databases on my Kobo ereaders. I'm reasonably sure it is right, but I can't guarantee it.