Can’t hide, as reading habits laid bare with e-reader

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Table Normal; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A casual look around Kigali these days gives one the impression the tablet computer, especially the iPad, is slowly coming to its own as a necessary, if conspicuous, personal accessory many do not seem to want to leave behind. It keeps one busy, or entertained. Other than browsing or checking mail, a well equipped tablet with the appropriate apps allows one to do “anything” from gossip in the social media to playing interactive games and watching movies, to following news or downloading books. One would hope that the owners of the tablets have installed e-readers and that, unlike some of us, are making good use of them with the millions of books on offer. Reading can only be a good thing. Except that there is a catch for the e-book readers, according to Alexandra Alter in her article, Your E-book is Reading You, in the Wall Street Journal recently. In the past, she observes, 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? It turns out that some of the major e-book publishers, including 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.” Alter gives the example of Amazon, which can identify which passages of digital books are popular with readers. Amazon aggregates these selections to see what gets underlined the most. “Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers of the final book in Suzanne Collins’s ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy on the Kobo e-reader 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.’” It is followed by the opening sentence of Jane Austen’s classic book, Pride and Prejudice. Barnes & Noble, goes on the WSJ article, has determined, through analyzing its Nook e-reader data, that nonfiction books tend to be read in fits and starts, while novels are generally read straight through, and that nonfiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier. Science-fiction, romance and crime-fiction fans often read more books more quickly than readers of literary fiction do, and finish most of the books they start. Readers of literary fiction quit books more often and tend to skip around between books. It is all in effectively catering to the various tastes with an eye on the bottom-line by the publishers. But with so much of our reading habits out there, what does all this mean about our privacy as a reader? It is still a new thing to contemplate, but we as EAC citizens, including our lawmakers, may want to borrow a leaf to safeguard our privacy. The WSJ article explains that the US state of California has “instituted the ‘reader privacy act,’ which makes it more difficult for law-enforcement groups to gain access to consumers’ digital reading records. Under the new law, agencies must get a court order before they can require digital booksellers to turn over information revealing which books their customers have browsed, purchased, read and underlined.” California is the only state so far to do so.

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Can’t hide, as reading habits laid bare with e-reader