1. Most e-book readers do not know that their reading behavior can be tracked. What ethical concerns might readers have? Are there any protections in place for consumers who may not want their reading behavior tracked?
2. What would your textbook reading behavior data reveal to publishers? How would the marketing of textbooks change based on your behavior?
E-book sales have now surpassed print book sales, resulting in lower margins for all companies in the publishing industry value chain. However, there is a silver lining to this trend-e-books can read the readers. Publishers and e-book retailers are gathering billions of bits of information from e-book readers. The publishing industry has been notorious for not conducting research, leaving authors to lament that they didn't know who their readers were or what they wanted. The only way to know if readers liked a book was from sales data after the fact. Not anymore. Now companies know how many hours readers spend reading a book and how far they get when they open it. Some publishers are even testing e-book manuscripts, revising them based on feedback, and then publishing the print version. Scholastic Inc. has set up online message boards and interactive games to learn what storylines and characters are connecting with readers. Coliloquy digital books let readers choose their own stories, which the company then aggregates and sends to the authors to shape future books. Amazon Kindle users sign an agreement giving the company permission to store their reading behavior data, and the company then highlights some of the data on its Web site. For example, the most highlighted passage in Catching Fire, the second book of the popular Hunger Games series, is "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them."