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Your Ebook Is Reading You Summary

Decent Essays

Alexandra Alter, a books and book publishing reporter for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in her article, "Your E-book Is Reading You" discusses the ability for publishers to collect customer reading habits information (analytics) through the use of e-book readers and related software. Prior to working at the WSJ, Alter earned a college degree and master's degrees in journalism and religion from Columbia University. The WSJ is a prestigious newspaper in the United States with over 2 million readers. The WSJ is one of the most widely read newspapers. The target audience for this article consists of general book readers and consumers using e-book readers. The article is a timely as in 2012; the Pew Research Center released a report demonstrating …show more content…

Analytics is the core message that Alter is trying to discuss with the reader. The big players in digital publishing and retailing (Google, Amazon, and Apple) are now able to collect many data points through their applications and devices. Through the acting of reading, consumers are generating data, which stored in a database. In turn, publishers process and transforms this data into behavior analytics. In the past, publishers had no way of knowing what a reader's behavior was like. Before the invention of digital books and e-book readers, reading was a solidary activity. Publishers had access to sales data and little else. With the development of e-reading devices such as the Kindle, publishers are now able to analyze reader's behaviors and develop some analytics. Businessdictionary.com defines analytics as "The field of data analysis. Analytics often involves studying past historical data to research potential trends, to analyze the effects of certain decisions or events, or to evaluate the performance of a given tool or scenario. The goal of analytics is to improve the business by gaining knowledge which can be used to make improvements or changes." Alter's claim is digital publishers have greater access to …show more content…

According to the WSJ media kit, the average household income for a WSJ reader is over $200,000 USD. The author understands that she is writing for an educated audience. Alter uses hypophora in the second paragraph of the article in reference to the publisher's lack of understanding of reader behaviors. "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?" Alter uses anaphora in the sixth paragraph: "how far readers get in particular books, how quickly they read and how readers of particular genres engage with books." to emphasize the data collected by publisher Barnes & Noble through their e-book reader, the Nook. In paragraph 8, Alter makes use of parenthesis "But the data—which focuses on groups of readers, not individuals—has already yielded some useful insights into how people read particular genres." to explain the type of data that collected by the Nook. Barnes & Noble have enough data to aggregate behaviors based on the behaviors of groups of readers. The author chooses parenthesis again with "Kindle users sign an agreement granting the company permission to store information from the device—including the last page you've read, plus your bookmarks, highlights, notes and annotations—in its data servers." In both cases, parenthesis exists to reinforce the

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