你是什麼性格 電子書閱讀器最瞭解你大綱

You've finally finished the book your co-worker recommended, so what to read next?

你終於讀完了同事推薦的那本書，接下來要讀什麼呢？

If it is 5 a.m., chances are that you're reaching for a romance novel -- especially if you're in Texas or Georgia. By early morning, thrillers might start to look more appealing. And if Philip K. Dick is your favorite author, books about beer are probably more up your alley than anything about wine or liquor.

如果當時是凌晨五點，你很可能會選一本言情小說――特別是如果你住在得克薩斯或佐治亞州的話。到了清晨，驚悚小說或許會開始顯得更有吸引力。如果菲利普・K.・迪克(Philip K. Dick)是你最喜愛的作家，關於啤酒而非葡萄酒或烈酒的書籍可能更符合你的口味。

These are some of the insights from Scribd Inc. and Oyster, two startups that offer unlimited e-book rentals for a monthly subscription fee. Scribd, Oyster and Entitle Books -- which just launched in December -- are tracking reader behavior in hopes of churning out recommendations of exactly what you'll want to pick up next.

這些都是來自Scribd及Oyster公司的見解，這兩家初創企業以按月付訂閱費的模式提供無限量的電子書租閱服務。這兩家公司和剛剛在去年12月上線的Entitle Books都在跟蹤讀者的閱讀行爲，希望藉此就讀者接下來想選什麼書做出精準的推薦。

About 50% of the U.S. population owns a dedicated e-reader, according to a Pew Research study released last month. In addition, 28% read an e-book last year, up from 23% the previous year.

皮尤研究中心(Pew Research)在1月份發佈的研究指出，美國約有50%的人擁有一部專門的電子書閱讀器。此外，去年有28%的人讀過一本電子書，高於前年23%的比例。

The services are expanding. Scribd, a San Francisco-based site that started selling monthly e-book subscriptions in October, announced Jan. 22 that its app is available on Amazon's Kindle Fire and Kindle Paperwhite. After running exclusively on Apple's operating system, New York-based Oyster plans to expand to Android later this year. And Entitle is considering adding an all-you-can-read feature to complement its current 'book of the month'-style subscription service.

此類服務還在逐步拓展。Scribd在1月22日宣佈，該公司的應用可在亞馬遜(Amazon)的Kindle Fire和Kindle Paperwhite上下載。這家總部位於舊金山的網站從去年10月開始推出按月付費的電子書訂閱服務。位於紐約的Oyster也計劃在今年晚些時候擴展至Android系統，此前它的應用只能在蘋果(Apple)的操作系統上運行。此外，Entitle還在考慮新增“所有你能讀的書”(all-you-can-read)這一功能，以補充其現有的“本月熱門書籍”式的訂閱服務。

Subscription services are popular because they 'reduce the emotional burden' of purchasing, says Julie Haddon, Scribd vice president of marketing. Buying a book creates pressure to finish and get your money's worth, she adds. In addition, people might try to save money by buying a cheaper book instead of the one they really want.

Scribd營銷副總裁朱莉・哈登(Julie Haddon)指出，訂閱服務之所以大行其道，是因爲它們可“減輕（買書的）精神負擔”。她說，買書會造成帶來壓力，讓人感覺必須把它讀完才能物有所值。此外，人們可能會爲了省錢而買一本比較便宜的書，而不是去買他們真正想讀的書。

The challenge is that the selection of books can be limited. Of the five main publishing houses, only HarperCollins books are available on all three services. Entitle also has a contract with Simon & Schuster. (HarperCollins is a subsidiary of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.) The three also carry books from hundreds of smaller publishers.

這三家公司面臨的困難在於可供選擇的租閱書數量有限。在美國五大主要出版社中，只有哈珀柯林斯(HarperCollins)的圖書是上述這三家企業全都提供的。Entitle還與Simon & Schuster簽訂了合約。（哈珀柯林斯爲新聞集團(News Corp.)的子公司，後者也是《華爾街日報》(The Wall Street Journal)的母公司。）這三家電子書租閱公司還提供來自數百家小出版社的圖書。

Brian Konash, 34, who works at Web startup Squarespace in Manhattan, joined Oyster two months ago because it didn't cause the buyers' remorse he experienced when purchasing Kindle e-books. 'You've already paid for the service, so you can read as much as you want,' he says. 'With other models, there's that little financial bite each time you want to buy a book and you worry that it's going to be a dud.' Mr. Konash, who has been picking books based on the site's suggestions, predicts he'll read up to 10 more books a year beyond his usual 25.

今年34歲的布賴恩・科納什(Brian Konash)是曼哈頓網絡初創企業Squarespace的職員，他在兩個月前訂閱了Oyster，因爲它不會使他產生買家常有的懊悔感，而他在購買Kindle的電子書時就曾有過這樣的感覺。他說：“你已經爲這些服務付費，所以你想讀多少就能讀多少。如果是其他模式的話，每次你想買本書都會有些經濟上的小顧慮，而且你還會擔心那本書會讓你失望。”科納什一直根據Oyster的建議挑選書籍，他預計自己一年的閱讀量會比往常的25本最多可多出10本。

An all-access subscription 'lowers the activation energy for reading,' says Oyster CEO Eric Stromberg. Reading often has a high 'activation energy' because there's a time gap between wanting to read a book and then actually getting your hands on it, he says. 'When you can order a book and instantly get it on your tablet, you can hear about the book and then read it right there,' says Willem van Lancker, Oyster's chief product officer.

Oyster的首席執行長埃裏克・斯特龍伯格(Eric Stromberg)稱，無限量訂閱“會減少激發閱讀動力時所需的能量”。他說，閱讀往往需要很強的“激發能量”，因爲從你想讀一本書到真的着手去讀它之間有個時間差。該公司首席產品長威廉・範朗克(Willem van Lancker)說：“如果你能在訂了一本書後馬上就能通過平板電腦收到，那麼你可能剛剛聽說一本書，就可以馬上在平板上閱讀。”

'From the publishing perspective, the biggest problem is how to get people to care about a new book,' says Otis Chandler, CEO of Goodreads, a site where people share what they're reading and post recommendations. Goodreads, which was acquired by Amazon in March, uses an algorithm that recommends books that users with similar taste have enjoyed.

Goodreads首席執行長奧蒂斯・錢德勒(Otis Chandler)指出：“從出版的角度看，最大的問題是如何讓大家對一本新書產生興趣。” Goodreads網站爲人們分享並推薦自己所讀書目提供平臺，於去年3月被亞馬遜收購。該網站利用某種算法來推薦喜好相似的用戶都喜歡讀的書。

Oyster and Scribd ask readers to rate books, what they call an 'active signal.' They also track 'passive signals,' such as the percentage of a book that a reader finishes and the click rate, or how many people who are shown a book click through to learn more. The companies use that information among other factors to recommend books.

Oyster 與 Scribd會邀請讀者給書評分，這被他們稱爲“主動信號”。他們還會跟蹤“被動信號”，比如某本書被讀者讀完的比例和點擊率，或者看到某本書的人中有多少會點擊它去了解更多信息。這些企業就藉助此類信息再結合其他因素來推薦圖書。

Active signals represent what we wish we read, while passive signals are more honest, says Jared Friedman, Scribd chief technology officer. A lot of people give a 5-star rating to 'The Great Gatsby,' while they devour, but don't necessarily rate, thrillers like 'The Da Vinci Code,' for example. (Scribd declined to discuss data on specific books.)

Scribd首席技術長賈裏德・弗裏德曼(Jared Friedman)稱，主動信號代表我們希望自己去讀的書，而被動信號則更爲誠實。比如說，許多人會給《了不起的蓋茨比》(The Great Gatsby)五星的評分，但他們在專心閱讀諸如《達芬奇密碼》(The Da Vinci Code)之類的驚悚小說時卻不一定會給它們評分。（Scribd拒絕談論有關具體書籍的數據。）

Other findings: Self-help might be a popular market, yet only about 20% of people who start such a book finish it. More than 80% of people who crack the pages of a mystery novel will find out who did it.

其他發現還包括：勵志類書籍或許是個熱門領域，但是選擇此類圖書的讀者只有約20%的人會把它讀完。閱讀懸疑小說的讀者有80%以上的人能解開謎底。

People trudge through biographies at 20 pages per hour, while they read at three times that speed for erotica. And higher 'acceleration factor' -- or how much readers speed up as they get closer to finishing -- correlates with higher average rating for a book. One of the highest acceleration factors comes from Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle,' which readers start speeding through at the halfway mark, Mr. Friedman says.

人們閱讀自傳作品的速度僅爲每小時20頁，讀色情作品的速度則是這個速度的三倍。較高的“加速因子”――即讀者快要把書讀完時的加速幅度――與書籍較高的平均評分有關。弗裏德曼透露，庫爾特・馮內古特(Kurt Vonnegut)的《貓的搖籃》(Cat's Cradle)是加速因子最高的作品之一，讀者在讀到一半時就開始加快閱讀速度。

All three companies allow users to hide their reading behavior from other customers, but users can't opt out of their behavior being collected by the company itself. Entitle, however, says it keeps track of browsing and download information only.

上述三家電子書租閱企業全都允許用戶向其他用戶隱藏自己的閱讀行爲，但他們無法選擇不讓這些公司收集他們的閱讀行爲。不過，Entitle稱它只記錄用戶的瀏覽和下載信息。

Personalized recommendations drive 10 times more browsing traffic than lists based on themes such as 'globe-trotting memoirs' or 'bad role models' that replicate racks at the front of bookstores, Scribd's Mr. Friedman says. The company is interested in combining algorithms with lists to create a list of best sellers that someone would, based on past reading behavior, find interesting. Another possible approach is to suggest different books or genres depending on time of day to take advantage of what the company knows about time-based preferences.

Scribd的弗裏德曼稱，與模仿實體書店的排行榜、按照“環遊全球回憶錄”或“壞榜樣”等主題制定的榜單相比，個性化的推薦帶來的瀏覽流量是前者的10倍。該公司有意將算法與排行榜結合在一起，制定一個根據讀者以往閱讀習慣判斷可能會讓他們感興趣的暢銷書排行榜。另一個可能的方法是，利用公司掌握的不同時段內讀者閱讀喜好的變化情況，在一天當中的不同時段推薦不同的書籍或體裁。

At Wilmington, N.C.-based Entitle, the algorithm doesn't just crunch behavior signals, but 'reads' through a book's text to pull out different topics, genres and subjects, says Bryan Batten, chief executive of Entitle, which used to be known as eReatah Inc.

Entitle首席執行長布賴恩・巴滕(Bryan Batten)說，對該公司而言，算法不只是用以分析行爲信號，還要“解讀”整本書的文本來提取不同的話題、體裁和主題。Entitle的總部位於北卡羅來納州的威明頓市(Wilmington)，原名爲eReatah。

There's also a patent-pending service called 'if these books had a baby,' where users can input two books and find a third with similar themes. For example, the 'baby' of Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22' and Leo Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' is Fyodor Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov,' but the product of 'Catch-22' and Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography is a book called 'Dealers of Lightning,' about engineers at Xerox Corp.

還有一項正在申請專利的服務名爲“假如這些書還有後代”(if these books had a baby)，用戶輸入兩本書的書名便可找到第三本主題相似的書。比如說，約瑟夫・海勒(Joseph Heller)的《第二十二條軍規》(CATCH-22)與列夫・托爾斯泰(Leo Tolstoy)的《安娜・卡列尼娜》(Anna Karenina)的“後代”就是費奧多爾・陀思妥耶夫斯基(Fyodor Dostoevsky)的《卡拉馬佐夫兄弟》(The Brothers Karamazov)，而《第二十二條軍規》與沃爾特・艾薩克森(Walter Isaacson)的《喬布斯傳》(Steve Jobs)的後代則是《創新未酬》(Dealers of Lightning)，這本書講述了施樂公司(Xerox Corp.)工程師們的故事。

Entitle operates on a tiered model: two books for $9.99 a month (the most popular plan), three for $14.99, and so on. For customers, the upside is being able to keep the e-books, even if they cancel the service.

Entitle採用了分級模式運營：每月付費9.99美元可讀兩本書（最受歡迎的方案），付費14.99美元則可讀三本書等等。對消費者而言，好處是即使他們取消了服務也能保留這些電子書。

The services, of course, compete with the library. But libraries have had limited e-book offerings and there are often waits for the books. Robert Wolven, co-chair of the American Library Association's Digital Content Working Group, says demand has increased significantly in the past 18 months. He says he doesn't see the startups as a threat.

當然，這些服務與圖書館產生了競爭。圖書館可提供的電子書數量有限，而且往往需要等待才能拿到書。美國圖書館協會(American Library Association)數字內容工作小組(Digital Content Working Group)聯席主席羅伯特・沃爾溫(Robert Wolven)稱，過去18個月中讀者的需求急劇增長。儘管如此，他認爲那些初創公司並不構成威脅。

While libraries' budget for e-books has been growing, licensing restrictions mean that popular titles often aren't available, says Laura Girmscheid, research manager for the trade publication Library Journal, which recently released its fourth annual report on e-books in libraries. This, combined with holds on e-books, is the largest hurdle preventing people from using library e-books more.

圖書館行業刊物《圖書館雜誌》(Library Journal)的調研經理勞拉・吉爾姆沙伊德(Laura Girmscheid)稱，儘管圖書館的電子書預算一直在提高，但由於許可限制，他們常常拿不到熱門書籍。這個因素，加上電子書的獲取有延誤，成爲阻礙大家更多地利用圖書館電子書的最大障礙。

'It's just not convenient for instant access,' Ms. Girmscheid says.

吉爾姆沙伊德說：“它不方便即時獲取。”