当心，电子书也在“读”你

It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's 'Hunger Games' trilogy on the Kobo e-reader─about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers 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.' And on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first 'Hunger Games' book is to download the next one.

普通读者用Kobo电子阅读器看完苏珊娜·柯林斯(Suzanne Collins)的《饥饿游戏》(Hunger Games)三部曲的最后一部只需七个小时，差不多每小时看57页。该系列第二部中的一句话──“因为有时候人们总会遇到一些事，但又没有做好处理的准备。──被近18,000名Kindle用户高亮标示出来。至于巴诺书店(Barnes & Noble)Nook电子阅读器的用户，他们读完《饥饿游戏》第一部后做的第一件事就是下载下一部。

In the past, 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? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them.

在过去，出版商和作家都无从了解读者的阅读情况。他们无从了解读者是看了三页就不看了呢还是一口气把书读完了？大多数读者会跳过介绍还是会仔细阅读它、会不会在一些段落下划线、会不会在空白处做笔记？而现如今，电子阅读器能够让出版商和作家一窥销售额背后的故事，它们不仅仅能够显示某些书吸引了多少购买者，还能揭示他们的阅读强度。

For centuries, reading has largely been a solitary and private act, an intimate exchange between the reader and the words on the page. But the rise of digital books has prompted a profound shift in the way we read, transforming the activity into something measurable and quasi-public.

数世纪以来，阅读基本上是一种单独的、私密的行为，它是读者与书页上的文字之间的亲密交流。然而，随着电子阅读器的兴起，我们的阅读方式发生了深刻的变化，阅读转变为某种可以测量的半公开的行为。

The major new players in e-book publishing─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.

目前，电子书出版领域的主要竞争者有亚马逊(Amazon)、苹果(Apple)和谷歌(Google)，它们能够轻松跟踪读者的阅读进度、花在阅读上的时间、以及搜索图书时使用的关键字。iPad、Kindle Fire和Nook等平板电脑的图书软件能够记录用户打开软件的次数并能记录他们的阅读时长。电子书零售商和一些出版社开始细致研究这些数据，从而对人们的阅读行为获得前所未有的了解。

Publishing has lagged far behind the rest of the entertainment industry when it comes to measuring consumers' tastes and habits. TV producers relentlessly test new shows through focus groups; movie studios run films through a battery of tests and retool them based on viewers' reactions. But in publishing, reader satisfaction has largely been gauged by sales data and reviews─metrics that offer a postmortem measure of success but can't shape or predict a hit. That's beginning to change as publishers and booksellers start to embrace big data, and more tech companies turn their sights on publishing.

说到揣度消费者的爱好和习惯，出版界要远远落后于文娱业的其他领域。例如，电视制作人孜孜不倦地通过焦点小组来试播新节目，电影公司通过一系列试映来播放影片，然后根据观众的反应重新进行调整。然而，在出版界，读者满意度主要是通过销售数据和书评来衡量，这些指标往往只是在事后对一本书的成功做出衡量，并不能促成或是预测到一本书的热销。如今，由于出版社和书商开始获得大量数据，再加上更多科技公司将目光转向了出版界，这种情况正开始发生转变。

Barnes & Noble, which accounts for 25% to 30% of the e-book market through its Nook e-reader, has recently started studying customers' digital reading behavior. Data collected from Nooks reveals, for example, how far readers get in particular books, how quickly they read and how readers of particular genres engage with books. Jim Hilt, the company's vice president of e-books, says the company is starting to share their insights with publishers to help them create books that better hold people's attention.

巴诺书店借助其电子阅读器Nook在电子书市场占有25%至30%的份额，该公司最近开始研究消费者的电子阅读行为。例如，从Nook收集而来的数据能够显示读者看某些书的进度、他们的阅读速度以及某些特定类型的读者的阅读方式。巴诺书店负责电子书业务的副总裁吉姆·希尔特(Jim Hilt)称，该公司正开始与出版商分享他们的调查结果，以帮助他们创作出更能抓住大家的吸引力的书籍。

The stakes are high for the company as it seeks a greater share of the e-book market. Sales of Nook devices rose 45% this past fiscal year, and e-book sales for the Nook rose 119%. Overall, Nook devices and e-books generated $1.3 billion, compared to $880 million the previous year. Microsoft recently invested $300 million for a 17.6% stake of the Nook.

这件事对该公司而言利益攸关，因为其正努力寻求提高自己在电子书市场的份额。在过去这一财年，Nook平板电脑的销售额上升了45%，Nook电子书的销售额则大升119%。总的说来，Nook平板电脑和电子书的销售额从上一财年的8.8亿美元升至13亿美元。最近，微软(Microsoft)投资三亿美元收购了该公司17.6%的股份。

Mr. Hilt says that the company is still in 'the earliest stages of deep analytics' and is sifting through 'more data than we can use.' But the data─which focuses on groups of readers, not individuals─has already yielded some useful insights into how people read particular genres. Some of the findings confirm what retailers already know by glancing at the best-seller lists. For example, Nook users who buy the first book in a popular series like 'Fifty Shades of Grey' or 'Divergent,' a young-adult series by Veronica Roth, tend to tear through all the books in the series, almost as if they were reading a single novel.

希尔特称，该公司依然处于“深度分析的最初阶段，正在对“超出他们所能运用的数量的数据进行细致分析。但这些数据──聚焦于不同的读者群体而非个人──已经在揭示人们对特定类型书籍的阅读方式方面带来了一些很有助益的发现。例如，购买像《五十度灰》(Fifty Shades Of Grey)这样的畅销系列小说或是薇诺妮卡?罗斯(Veronica Roth)所作的《分歧者》(Divergent)这样的青少年系列小说第一部的Nook用户往往会把该系列全部读完，彷佛他们读的就是一本小说。

Barnes & Noble has determined, through analyzing Nook 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 skip around between books.

对来自Nook的数据进行分析之后，巴诺书店确定，人们在读非小说类书籍时往往会有间歇，读小说时一般会连续把书读完，而且非小说类书籍、特别是篇幅长的，往往会更早被读者扔在一旁。科幻小说、言情小说和犯罪小说的爱好者的阅读速度常常比文学类小说读者的速度快得多，而且他们会把看的书大多数都看完。文学类小说的读者读书半途而废的情况更常见，并且常常会同时交替阅读不同的书籍。

Those insights are already shaping the types of books that Barnes & Noble sells on its Nook. Mr. Hilt says that when the data showed that Nook readers routinely quit long works of nonfiction, the company began looking for ways to engage readers in nonfiction and long-form journalism. They decided to launch 'Nook Snaps,' short works on topics ranging from weight loss and religion to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

这些发现已经对巴诺书店在Nook上出售的书籍的类型产生了影响。希尔特称，当数据显示Nook的读者经常弃读长篇幅的非小说类书籍时，该公司就开始想办法来吸引读者阅读短篇幅非小说类作品和长篇报刊文章。他们决定推出“Nook Snaps，其中均为短篇作品，内容涉及从减肥、宗教到“占领华尔街运动的五花八门的话题。

Pinpointing the moment when readers get bored could also help publishers create splashier digital editions by adding a video, a Web link or other multimedia features, Mr. Hilt says. Publishers might be able to determine when interest in a fiction series is flagging if readers who bought and finished the first two books quickly suddenly slow down or quit reading later books in the series.

希尔特称，确定读者心生厌烦的时间也可帮助出版商通过增加视频、网络链接或其他多媒体功能来推出更具吸引力的数字版本。如果发现某系列科幻小说的读者在购买并迅速读完头两本后突然放慢了速度或者不再读该系列的书时，出版商或许能够确定该系列小说什么时候开始丧失了吸引力。

'The bigger trend we're trying to unearth is where are those drop-offs in certain kinds of books, and what can we do with publishers to prevent that?' Mr. Hilt says. 'If we can help authors create even better books than they create today, it's a win for everybody.'

他还说，“我们试图发掘的大方向是读者在阅读某些类型的书籍时于何处停止阅读，我们能够与出版商合作采取哪些措施来避免这种情况发生？如果我们能够帮助作家未来创作出比现在更棒的作品，这对每个人都有好处。

Some authors welcome the prospect. Novelist Scott Turow says he's long been frustrated by the industry's failure to study its customer base. 'I once had an argument with one of my publishers when I said, 'I've been publishing with you for a long time and you still don't know who buys my books,' and he said, 'Well, nobody in publishing knows that,' ' says Mr. Turow, president of the Authors Guild. 'If you can find out that a book is too long and you've got to be more rigorous in cutting, personally I'd love to get the information.'

部分作家对此前景持欢迎态度，其中美国作家协会(Authors Guild)主席、小说家斯科特·特罗(Scott Turow)便表示长期以来他对出版业未能研究消费群感到失望。特罗说，“我曾经和我的一名出版商发生争论，我说‘我和你合作出书那么长时间了，你仍然不知道哪些人买我的书，’他说道‘好吧，出版界都没有人知道’。如果你能发现书的篇幅太长了，那么你就要狠狠地删减，就我个人而言我乐意获得这种信息。

Others worry that a data-driven approach could hinder the kinds of creative risks that produce great literature. 'The thing about a book is that it can be eccentric, it can be the length it needs to be, and that is something the reader shouldn't have anything to do with,' says Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 'We're not going to shorten 'War and Peace' because someone didn't finish it.'

其他作家则担心，这种以数据推动的创作方式可能会阻碍那些有可能创作出伟大文学作品的风险性创新。Farrar, Straus & Giroux出版社总裁及发行人乔纳森·加拉西(Jonathan Galassi)认为，“一本书的独特之处在于它可以是超乎寻常的，它可以是它所需要的长度，这应该是与读者没有任何关系的事情。我们不会因为有人读不完《战争与和平》(War and Peace)就把它改短。

Publishers are only just beginning to mull over the potential uses for e-reading data. Many are skeptical that analytics can aid in the industry's ongoing battle to woo consumers who are increasingly distracted by games and social media. But at a time when traditional publishers are losing ground to tech giants like Amazon and Apple, better analytics seem to offer tantalizing possibilities.

目前，出版商仅仅是刚开始细致考虑电子阅读数据的潜在用途。许多人对分析学是否能够对出版业抢夺逐渐被游戏和社交媒体所吸引的消费者的持续大战提供帮助持怀疑态度。然而，在传统出版商在与亚马逊和苹果等科技巨头的大战中节节失利的情况下，更好的数据分析似乎带来了一些让人无法抗拒的希望。

Amazon, in particular, has an advantage in this field─it's both a retailer and a publisher, which puts the company in a unique position to use the data it gathers on its customers' reading habits. It's no secret that Amazon and other digital book retailers track and store consumer information detailing what books are purchased and read. 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.

其中，亚马逊在这个领域拥有特别的优势，因为它不仅是零售商，也是出版商，这些因素让它在利用其收集的消费者阅读习惯的数据方面具有得天独厚的优势。亚马逊和其他一些电子书零售商跟踪和存储有关消费者购买和阅读什么书的消费者信息已不是什么秘密。Kindle用户购机时会签署一份协议，授权亚马逊将来自Kindle的信息存储在其数据服务器上，其中包括用户最终的阅读进度、书签、高亮标记处、笔记以及注释等。

Amazon can identify which passages of digital books are popular with readers, and shares some of this data publicly on its website through features such as its 'most highlighted passages' list. Readers digitally 'highlight' selections using a button on the Kindle; they can also opt to see the lines commonly highlighted by other readers as they read a book. Amazon aggregates these selections to see what gets underlined the most. Topping the list is the line from the 'Hunger Games' trilogy. It is followed by the opening sentence of 'Pride and Prejudice.'

亚马逊可以确认电子书的哪些段落受到读者的欢迎，并能通过“最受关注的段落列表等此类功能将其中部分信息公布在其网站上。读者在用Kindle看书时可以用按键将节选出来的区域以数字方式高亮标出，他们在读书时还可以选择查看其他读者共同高亮标记出来的句子。亚马逊将这些节选出来的句子汇总在一起，查看哪些句子被高亮标出的频率最高，其中次数最多的是《饥饿者游戏》三部曲中的那句话，位居其次的是《傲慢与偏见》(Pride and Prejudice)开篇第一句话。

'We think of it as the collective intelligence of all the people reading on Kindle,' says Amazon spokeswoman Kinley Pearsall.

亚马逊发言人金莉·佩尔索尔（Kinley Pearsall）称，“我们认为这是所有用Kindle看书的读者的集体智慧。

Some privacy watchdogs argue that e-book users should be protected from having their digital reading habits recorded. 'There's a societal ideal that what you read is nobody else's business,' says Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates for consumer rights and privacy. 'Right now, there's no way for you to tell Amazon, I want to buy your books, but I don't want you to track what I'm reading.'

一些隐私监管机构提出，应保护电子书读者的电子阅读习惯不被记录下来。倡导消费者权利及隐私的非营利组织电子前沿基金会(Electronic Frontier Foundation，简称“EFF)的法务总监辛迪·科恩(Cindy Cohn)称，“有一种社会理想状态是，你看什么书与他人无关。但是现在你却没有办法告诉亚马逊说‘我想买你们的书，但是我不希望你们跟踪我在读什么书’。亚马逊拒绝就该公司如何分析和利用其收集的Kindle数据置评。

Amazon declined to comment on how it analyzes and uses the Kindle data it gathers.

EFF已推动立法工作，防止电子书零售商在未获得法院批准的情况下将有关个人阅读习惯的信息作为证据交给执法机构。今年早些时候，加州制定了《读者隐私法案》，它加大了执法机构获取消费者的电子阅读记录的难度。依据这项新法案，执法机构在获得法院命令之后才可要求电子书销售商提供披露消费者浏览、购买并高亮标示了哪些书的信息。美国公民自由联盟(American Civil Liberties Union)和EFF曾联手谷歌和其他组织推动这项立法，如今它们正努力推动美国其他州也制定同样的法案。

EFF has pressed for legislation to prevent digital book retailers from handing over information about individuals' reading habits as evidence to law enforcement agencies without a court's approval. Earlier this year, California 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. The American Civil Liberties Union and EFF, which partnered with Google and other organizations to push for the legislation, are now seeking to enact similar laws in other states.

网络安全专家及作家布鲁斯·施奈尔(Bruce Schneier)担心，由于害怕自己的阅读会被跟踪，读者可能会彻底远离关于健康、性行为和安全等敏感题材的电子书，其中也包括他自己写的书。他说，“我们读的东西有许多是不想让别人知道的。

Bruce Schneier, a cyber-security expert and author, worries that readers may steer clear of digital books on sensitive subjects such as health, sexuality and security─including his own works─out of fear that their reading is being tracked. 'There are a gazillion things that we read that we want to read in private,' Mr. Schneier says.

市场研究公司Forrester Research的分析师称，美国使用中的电子书和平板电脑分别约有4000万部和6500万部。美国出版商协会(Association of American Publishers)近期发现，2012年第一季度的电子书销售额达2.82亿美元，而纸质书的销售额为2.3亿美元。

There are some 40 million e-readers and 65 million tablets in use in the U.S., according to analysts at Forrester Research. In the first quarter of 2012, e-books generated $282 million in sales, compared to $230 million for print, the Association of American Publishers recently found.

与此同时，电子书阅读潮流引发各家寻求利用从电子阅读设备和阅读软件收集而来的大量数据的电子书初创企业你争我夺。如今读者可通过新型电子阅读服务购买电子书并把书存储在电子书库中，然后可以在不同设备上阅读这些书，这些服务安装了一些最精密的读者跟踪软件。例如，拥有50,000名订阅用户的电子阅读平台Copia会收集有关人口特征和阅读数据的详细信息，其中包括购买了某些书的消费者的年龄、性别和就读的学校以及这些书被下载、打开和阅读的次数，并和出版商分享其调查结果。Copia将这些数据汇总，这样一来单个用户的身份不会暴露，Copia会与提出索取要求的出版商分享这些信息。

Meanwhile, the shift to digital books has fueled an arms race among digital start-ups seeking to cash in on the massive pool of data collected by e-reading devices and reading apps. New e-reading services, which allow readers to purchase and store books in a digital library and read them on different devices, have some of the most sophisticated reader tracking software. The digital reading platform Copia, which has 50,000 subscribers, collects detailed demographic and reading data─including the age, gender and school affiliation of people who bought particular titles, as well as how many times the books were downloaded, opened and read─and shares its findings with publishers. Copia aggregates the data, so that individual users aren't identifiable, and shares that information with publishers that request it.

Kobo是一家电子阅读设备制造商，同时还运营着一项存储了250万本电子书、拥有逾800万用户的电子阅读服务。该公司最近开始研究读者群对某些书和某些类型的书籍的阅读习惯。该公司会跟踪读者阅读某些书的时间和他们的阅读进度。例如，该公司通过跟踪发现大多数看乔治·马丁(George R.R. Martin)的奇幻小说《与龙共舞》(A Dance With Dragons)的读者都会把这本书读完，他们花在这本书上的时间平均为20小时，对于一本长达1,040页的书来说速度算是比较快的了。

Kobo, which makes digital reading devices and operates an e-reading service that stocks 2.5 million books and has more than eight million users, has recently started looking at how readers as a whole engage with particular books and genres. The company tracks how many hours readers spend on particular titles and how far they get. Kobo recently found, for example, that most readers who started George R.R. Martin's fantasy novel 'A Dance With Dragons' finished the book, and spent an average of 20 hours reading it, a relatively fast read for a 1,040-page novel.

有些出版商开始在出版纸质版本之前先销售电子版试探市场反应。比如说，在今年早些时候，每年出版250本书的Sourcebooks出版社就通过一种新式的成系列的在线出版模式进行尝试。其推出了六本书的初期在线版，题材涉及爱情、青少年读物与非小说类书籍等，最终在出版纸质版本时，读者的反馈会被融合进来。

Some publishers are already beginning to market test books digitally, before releasing a print edition. Earlier this year, Sourcebooks, which publishes 250 titles a year, began experimenting with a new model of serial, online publishing. Sourcebooks has released early online editions for half a dozen titles, ranging from romance to young adult to nonfiction books, and has solicited questions and suggestions from readers. Eventually, readers' feedback will be incorporated into the print version.

此外，出版了《哈利波特》(Harry Potter)和《饥饿游戏》等畅销青少年小说的Scholastic出版社也建立了在线留言板以及与其畅销系列小说《39条线索》(39 Clues)关联的互动游戏。该在线游戏和相关留言板有190万名注册用户，它们能够帮助Scholastic追踪哪些故事线索和角色能够引起年轻读者的共鸣。Scholastic的发行人及编务总监戴维·莱维森(David Levithan)称，在线反馈为仍在继续创作的《39条线索》系列小说的构思提供了帮助，并使其成为全球性畅销书，印刷数量超过了1500万本。

Scholastic, which publishes popular young-adult fiction such as Harry Potter and 'The Hunger Games,' created online message boards and interactive games connected to its popular series '39 Clues.' The online game and message board, which has 1.9 million registered users, allows the publisher to track which story lines and characters are resonating with young readers. David Levithan, Scholastic's publisher and editorial director, says the online feedback has shaped the ongoing '39 Clues' series and helped to turn it into a global franchise with more than 15 million copies in print.

莱维森说，“你极少能一窥读者的想法，纸质书不存在数据分析这样的事情，你无法分辨哪些页被读者折上了角。

'You very rarely get a glimpse into the reader's mind,' he says. 'With a printed book, there's no such thing as an analytic. You can't tell which pages are dog-eared.'

很少有出版商的尝试能达到与Coliloquy同样的程度，后者是一家电子出版公司，由计算机科学家、曾在谷歌任工程师的韦恩·卢(Waynn Lue)和风险资本家、游戏分析公司Twofish的前总裁丽莎·卢瑟福(Lisa Rutherford)创立。

Few publishers have taken the experiment as far as Coliloquy, a digital publishing company that was created earlier this year by Waynn Lue, a computer scientist and former Google engineer, and Lisa Rutherford, a venture capitalist and former president of Twofish, a gaming-analytics firm.

Coliloquy的电子书可以在Kindle、Nook和Android等电子阅读器上读到，这些电子书具备一种“选择你自己的历险经历的模式，允许读者自己设计人物角色和情节线索。该公司的工程师会把从读者的选择中收集而来的数据汇总起来，然后把它发给作家，最后作家再在他们接下来要写的书中调整故事线索来体现受大众欢迎的选择。卢说，“我们看到数据和分析方法是如何彻底改变了手机软件和游戏等某些行业。在阅读方面，我们还没有那种互动数据，我们所希望的就是提供一种以往并不存在的作者与读者之间的反馈机制。

Coliloquy's digital books, which are available on Kindle, Nook and Android e-readers, have a 'choose-your-own-adventure'-style format, allowing readers to customize characters and plot lines. The company's engineers aggregate and pool the data gleaned from readers' selections and send it to the authors, who can adjust story lines in their next books to reflect popular choices.

Coliloquy借助亚马逊的Kindle数据开发者项目开发了其软件，亚马逊的这个项目允许外部企业为Kindle创建互动内容。Coliloquy的专有数据平台采用了类似于游戏软件的复杂算法，可让读者从不同的叙事路径中进行选择。

'Data and analytics, we've seen how it revolutionized certain industries like mobile apps and gaming,' says Mr. Lue. 'With reading, we don't yet have that engagement data, and we wanted to provide a feedback mechanism that didn't exist before between authors and readers.'

Coliloquy聘请了六名编辑和五名技术和产品开发人员，并招募爱情、非小说类书籍、青少年奇幻小说和情色小说等一系列类型作品的作家。自今年1月份启动以来，该公司已发行了八本书，并正在新增犯罪小说、法理惊悚小说以及实验性小说。卢和卢瑟福以与亚马逊签署了保密协议为由，拒绝提供Coliloquy所发行的书籍的销售额。他们说，购买Coliloquy所发行的书籍（售价从2.99至7.99美元不等）的读者有90%以上把书读完了，还有67%的读者会重读一遍。

Coliloquy developed its software through Amazon's Kindle data developer program, which allows outside companies to create interactive content for Kindle. Their proprietary data platform draws on complex algorithms, similar to gaming software, that lets readers choose from different narrative pathways.

基拉·斯耐德(Kira Snyder)的青少年悬疑系列小说《Parish Mail》的故事背景设在新奥尔良，读者可以决定书中的少年主角是利用魔法破案还是与一位警探十几岁的儿子一同联手破案。琳达·威斯德姆(Linda Wisdom)与琳达·司各特(Lynda K. Scott)合写的情色爱情系列小说《大逃亡》(Great Escapes)的读者可以决定主人公的外貌和爱情场景的炽热程度。Coliloquy最近一份报告显示，《大逃亡》读者心目中理想的主人公应该是高个子、黑头发和绿眼睛，体格要强壮结实，还应该有适度数量但不应过多的胸毛。

The company hired six editors and five technology and product developers and began recruiting authors from a range of genres, including romance, nonfiction, young adult fantasy and erotica. Since launching this past January, the company has released eight titles, and is expanding into crime fiction, legal thrillers and experimental fiction. Mr. Lue and Ms. Rutherford declined to provide sales figures for Coliloquy's titles, citing a nondisclosure agreement with Amazon. But they say more than 90% of readers who buy Colloquy's books, which range from $2.99 to $7.99, finish reading them, and 67% reread the books.

托娜·芬斯基(Tawna Fenske)的浪漫惊险喜剧小说《抛弃》(Getting Dumped)的主人公是一个起初在当地公共关系部门拥有一份体面工作、在被解雇后在一个垃圾填埋场找了份工作的的年轻女孩，读者可以选择女主人公与三位追求者中的哪一位产生故事。最近一批数据显示，53.3%的读者选择了休·格兰特(Hugh Grant)类型的科林(Collin)，16.8%的读者选择了英俊但是已有对象的皮特(Pete)，另外还有29.7%的读者选择了女主人公感情疏远的男友丹尼尔(Daniel)。

In 'Parish Mail,' Kira Snyder's young adult mystery series set in New Orleans, readers can decide whether the teenage protagonist solves crimes by using magic or by teaming up with a police detective's cute teenage son. Readers of 'Great Escapes,' an erotic romance series co-written by Linda Wisdom and Lynda K. Scott, can customize the hero's appearance and the intensity of the love scenes. A recent report from Coliloquy showed that the ideal hero for 'Great Escapes' readers is tall with black hair and green eyes, a rugged, burly build and a moderately but not overly hairy chest.

芬斯基原本计划在书中把丹尼尔送进监狱并让他从该系列中消失。后来她看到了这些数据，最终她决定29.7%的比例占了读者的一大部分，因此不能忽视他们。

In Tawna Fenske's romantic caper 'Getting Dumped'─which centers on a young woman who finds work at a landfill after getting laid off from her high-profile job at the county's public relations office─readers can choose which of three suitors they want the heroine to pursue. The most recent batch of statistics showed that 53.3% chose Collin, a Hugh Grant type; 16.8% chose Pete, the handsome but unavailable co-worker; and 29.7% of readers liked Daniel, the heroine's emotionally distant boyfriend.

芬斯基说，“长期以来都是编辑、经纪人或出版商告诉你‘这是读者想读的，’但是这些（数据）都是第一手的读者数据。以前我总是在想，那个人有没有买书、是不是只看了三页就不看了？如今我可以了解到他们买了书并在买完书的头一个星期就看了。

Ms. Fenske originally planned to get rid of Daniel by sending him to prison and writing him out of the series. Then she saw the statistics. She decided 29.7 % was too big a chunk of her audience to ignore.

'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, 37, who lives in Bend, Ore. 'I've always wondered, did that person buy it and stop after the first three pages? Now I can see they bought it and read it in the first week.'