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Best Reads

 Like Best Sellers. Based on aggregate electronic reader data
  (+10, -3)
(+10, -3) 		  [vote for,
against]

Perhaps the recommendation gnomes at Amazon have already thought of this, but...

It stands to reason, now that several generation of ebook readers and most famously the Kindle have started to make a real penetration into the book market, we can aggregate data about true reading behavior.

Now we can know -- ahead of time -- that certain boos are real page turners (something like "Most people who bought this book finished it in one hour", etc), but that others are lame (yep, it's a bestseller, but most don't make it past page 20).

—theircompetitor, Mar 10 2009

New York Times chimes in, without due credit :) http://gigaom.com/m...-best-sellers-list/
[theircompetitor, Nov 11 2010]

[link]






       Nielsen for books. Ok, I'll go for that.
—colorclocks, Mar 10 2009
   

       Good idea. Total time spent is also an excellent piece of information about self-study books.
—placid_turmoil, Mar 10 2009
   

       //that certain boos are real page turners//   

       be sure to bring them out for halloween. ; )
—k_sra, Mar 10 2009
   

       I think this falls down in at least two ways:   

       1. You may not have time to read the book in one go, make it to page 14, get hit by a bus, be reincarnated as a fly and then take milenia to work your way back up to human being and pick up the book again. So timescales can be warped by personnel circumstances. 2. If you are a lazy reader you may not be botherd to make it pass the first X pages were the writer is rambling until they think of the real blockbuster idea to fill out the remainder of their novel. So personnel circumstances can warp timescales.   

       And thus the balance is regained.   

       Anyway who wants to read an 'electronic' book. You will have nothing to burn when civilisation falls.
—eight_nine_tortoise, Mar 11 2009
   

       My wife reads three or four books a week. They're mostly rubbish.   

       (Except last month when she started on Carmac McCarthy - he's class).
—wagster, Mar 11 2009
   

       The key word here is aggregate. One could certainly argue that the Kindle readers, as a whole, are not necessarily representative -- but nevertheless, such information, aggregated, could provide all kinds of insight both into the books being read and into the readers thereof. Your argument, [eight...], would appear to invalidate web traffic analysis, and is thus specious. And I love my Kindle.
—theircompetitor, Mar 11 2009
   

       I keep reading this as "Rest Beads"
—Spacecoyote, Mar 13 2009
   

       I think a reflection of culture is sometimes seen in bestseller lists.(I rarely agree of course being terminally unique and all.)   

       Unfortunately I often think the term bestseller is often the same as most touted.   

       But I certainly think there is a place *now* for this idea. As newspapers fall by the wayside could books be far behind? I wonder. I dread. I wonder. I fear.
—blissmiss, Mar 14 2009
   

       //Total time spent is also an excellent piece of information about self-study books//   

       Over what time period? Sometimes I find a book or article with so much useful information I need to stop every other page and spend a couple of days thinking about it.
—Voice, Jan 28 2023
   
      
[annotate]
   


 

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