{"id":67,"date":"2012-08-22T14:02:27","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T18:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/?p=67"},"modified":"2012-08-22T14:02:27","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T18:02:27","slug":"reading-analytics-for-ebooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/reading-analytics-for-ebooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading analytics for eBooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are coming into very interesting times for publishing books because the\u00a0new ePub 3 format<\/a>\u00a0that is\u00a0coming up<\/a>\u00a0will have the possibility to track reading behaviour. From the readers’ perspective, this isn’t necessarily good because it amounts to a massive invasion of privacy<\/a>,\u00a0but from the perspective of someone trying new ways to teach mathematics like me, this would be a major tool.<\/p>\n

“So much of the time, it’s an editor and agent and publisher telling you, ‘This is what readers want,’ but this is hands-on reader data,” says Ms. Fenske<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love the above quote as it succinctly describes what is going on. We don’t need the publishers anymore. I mean yes, the average writer might still need some support along the way, say to write some js tracking code, and install piwik<\/a>, but in general the hacking-author can go a long way on his\/her own now.<\/p>\n

But J. says I should delegate more, so let us look at what platforms are out there. For $20 per month, Hyptype will let you see what is going on in your book<\/a>. I love the idea. This is perhaps the first good startup idea I have heard about in a long time. The value proposition is loud and clear. GA for eBooks. Bam! I will definitely have to get in touch with them.<\/p>\n

What other platforms are out there? The WSJ article lists several other companies doing stuff in that market. First there is big A, with their kindle dev program<\/a>\u00a0which is a way to create interactive reading stuff on the kindle. The startup Coliloquy<\/a> is using the kindle dev API to offer choose-your-own-adventure kind of books. Very cool, though a little Kindle specific. It seems that every<\/a> one<\/a> is getting \u00a0in<\/a> on this stuff.<\/p>\n

Like I said, interesting times are upon us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are coming into very interesting times for publishing books because the\u00a0new ePub 3 format\u00a0that is\u00a0coming up\u00a0will have the possibility to track reading behaviour. From the readers’ perspective, this isn’t necessarily good because it amounts to a massive invasion of privacy,\u00a0but from the perspective of someone trying new ways to teach mathematics like me, this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metrics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}