What if your agent called to say your publisher was doubling the ad budget on your new book because their Jellybooks reader analytics convinced them it was a rip-roaring page-turner?
Yippee!!
Or, what if you got a call with the heart-stopping news that your publisher was renegotiating your book contract because they knew that advance copy readers were skipping chapters 2 and 8?
Huh?? What just happened?
Reader Analytics: Ready or not
One of the first companies out of the gate to provide publishers with data about reader behavior is Jellybooks. How it works: Readers receive free e-book advance reading copies through the Jellybooks website, and in exchange, agree to let the company monitor their reading habits through embedded proprietary software. The tracking reveals how quickly they read, if and what parts they skip, whether they finish the book and how likely they are to recommend it to others.
On that last note, Jellybooks founder Andrew Rhomberg, speaking at the Digital Book World conference in New York earlier this year, pointed out that readers who don’t finish books, don’t recommend them. That’s a critical issue these days for building sales through social networking and user reviews.
Publishers are paying attention. The New York Times reports that Jellybooks has run tests on nearly 200 books for seven publishers, one major American publisher, three British publishers and three German houses. According to the story, “most of the publishers did not want to be identified, to avoid alarming their authors.” My italics. The company typically gathers reading data from groups of 200 to 600 readers.
Sound like Big Brother?
Well, yes – in the same way that Netflix tracks your viewing habits, Spotify knows what songs you skip, and incidentally, what doesn’t Amazon know about you by now?
The Jellybooks website tells potential readers that if having their reading habits monitored makes them uneasy, they should wait and buy a print copy. End of story.
But for writers it’s another matter. Do writers want or need the sensation of Big Brother peering over their shoulders as they face the empty page? As a longtime developmental editor, I can say that no serious writer would pander to a directive derived from anonymous reader responses.
Men read differently. Look out, or he’ll be gone gone gone.
Would it interest you to know that Jellybooks claims their data shows that men give up on a book much sooner than women do?
“If an author wants to hold on to a male reader, they have only 20 to 50 pages to capture their attention,” Rhomberg said in a recent Guardian article. “No room for rambling introductions. The author needs to get to the point quickly, build suspense or otherwise capture the male reader, or he is gone, gone, gone.”
Is this bad for writers?
Maybe. If it turns out your readers are giving up half way through the second book in your mystery thriller or sci-fi series, the publisher could conceivably decide to nix the third one and kill the whole contract.
Or what if readers skip around your book? An editor might decide to cut out chapters people aren’t reading, thereby risking the deletion of important content, not to mention disrupting the story’s flow.
How can you prevent this from happening to your book?
Here are a few preliminary strategies to fight what could be a nasty conflict to come.
Either you or your agent, if you have one, can negotiate language in the publisher’s contract that stipulates no changes can be made without the author’s approval.
Muster the venerable Authors Guild to fulfill their mission of advocating for authors rights. Specifically, their Fair Contract Initiative vows “to restore contractual balance to the author-publisher relationship and help authors achieve a fair return for the efforts they contribute.
You can opt out and make an end run around the potential danger by self publishing, thereby maintaining total control.
Is it time for doomsday predictions?
No. Nothing calamitous has happened as yet. Jellybooks notes that some publishers have adjusted their marketing plans up or down based on the early feedback of readers’ tracked behavior.
Let’s hope that wise heads prevail, and the power of authors to control their own creations isn’t compromised.
What about you?
What do you think about this latest development in 21st century digital technology? Scary? Maddening? Inevitable? We welcome your comments.
This is rather frightening. I’m a blogger and aspiring author. As a blogger, I’m well aware of the number of people who will be purely positive about something because they received it for free, as well as the people who collect freebies “just because” and hardly do anything with them. Some bloggers get the stuff just because it’s free, so when it’s redundant to them due to the lack of relevance, they rate it poorly.
My issue with Jellybooks seems to be inline with yours, with worrying about the quality of the feedback. It doesn’t seem as genuine or controlled.
To clarify: by controlled, I mean versus if the publisher or author selected the reviewers themselves, with reviewers being book bloggers or people whose demographic they’re more aware of.
Fascinating. If this had been available in 1949, Tolkien would probably never have published Lord of the Rings – as most males that I know, who read the book, found the first forty or so pages excruciatingly slow, but then M.R. James would not sell in a world where teen vampires abound, and we would be much the poorer.
If we write to satisfy a perceived need rather than to create that need, then we are serving the same dish over and over. It may be palatable and satisfy a basic hunger, but the wonder of something new is forever taken away.
Dear Byddi,
Yes, I agree that feedback from readers before publication can be helpful. Every author wants their book to be as good as it can be. But in all of my classes, training and workshops, I recommend being very careful about the source of the feedback. Many aspiring authors are in writers groups where members may either be polite or overly critical, with a hidden competitive agenda. Other authors seek out family and friends, where the personal relationship can inhibit or compromise an honest response.
As for the Reader Analytics sampling of 200-600 readers, it’s not the anonymity that worries me so much as the unknown qualitative value of the responses. In my own biased view, one experienced professional developmental editor can be more valuable than all these unknown readers.
The most successful writers I’ve worked with have sought out critical response and then decided for themselves about what to accept or reject. That process seems more valuable then a shot in the dark from an unknown source.
Can you imagine Herman Melville cutting out hundreds of pages in Moby Dick because someone said there’s too much boring stuff about whaling? Or Virginia Woolf revising Mrs. Dalloway because someone said the pace was lagging and they fell asleep while reading it?
OK. Few authors are on that level of literary genius, but any writer, at any stage of development needs to be very cautious about where the feedback is coming from before taking any action.
Good points. Thank-you for the clarification.
Byddi
It sounds like a Jellybeans analysis could be a valuable tool BEFORE publication, allowing a writer to make changes to that chapter that all the readers are snoozing through, or figuring out where the reader puts the book down and subsequently why that happens. As an author, I’d appreciate the feedback allowing me to make my book the best it could be. Once the book is published, it’s too late. It’s already out there and in my opinion that’s what is unfair to writers.
As a reader, I don’t want to waste my money on books I’m not going to finish.
I’m curious as to why you said, “As a longtime developmental editor, I can say that no serious writer would pander to a directive derived from anonymous reader responses.”
Is it the “anonymous reader” aspect of it? Since readers are our end users, surely serious writers are concerned about their responses?
I feel I’m missing something here, and I welcome more commentary.
Thanks for all the jellies, but there are three comments I would like to make:
1) Reader Analytics as conducted by Jellybooks does nto really look at content or how to improve the content of fiction books. Wheer content analysis using reader analaytcis is employed is in non-fiction, where the notion si rather untroversial with editors and authors and in mostc ases auhtors are closely involved in the rpocess.
2) Reader are not “anonymous”. They all opted in to their data being shared and many value “being heard”. The author and publisher can indeed see their individual reading data, as well as the surveys and feedback they provide. For reason of data protection (who should/can have access) and because it is not really revelent, actual names are not shown only “female 51” or “male 39”. Knowing that Jane Doe read chapter 17 between 14:07 and 14:39 isn’t all that relevant, though it could in principle be provided to the auhtor or publisher.
3) To think that reader analytcis of fictions shows that capater 17 was poorly received misunderstands how people read ad what data reader analytics collectss. If anytthing we have leanrt from the data that readers judge a book as a whole based on storyline, language, characters, plot et. and not on individual chapters.
Hello Jellybooks,
Thanks for your comment. Still seems dangerous to me, if taken seriously and acted upon by publishers.
Jelly-whatsis apparently can’t spell and didn’t check. I suppose they claim to be more careful when rating authors…
There are deep flaws in the system as described. As people tend to see only what is predicted (missing the gorilla walking through the ballgame), feedback systems like this tend to construct an imaginary future out of the past. Hardly a reliable navigational aid…