Is it creepy that Amazon is tracking most-highlighted Kindle passages?
Tracking bestselling books tells us about the reading habits, or at least buying habits, of the American public. But is there anything we can learn from tracking what information people consider important in those books?
We may find out, because Amazon is now displaying lists of the. It鈥檚 a relatively small sample 鈥� the current #1 passage, from Malcolm Gladwell鈥檚 bestseller 鈥淥utliers鈥�, was highlighted by 1,698 Kindle users. (For the record, it was this: 鈥淸T]hree things 鈥� autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward 鈥� are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.")
The entire Top 10 list of highlighted quotes was made up of "Outliers" and fellow bestsellers 鈥淭he Shack鈥� by William P. Young, and 鈥�The Lost Symbol鈥� by Dan Brown. In the category of most highlighted books, "The Lost Symbol" beat out the Bible for the #1 spot. I assume that says more about the narrow sampling parameters and the demographics of Kindle users than the depth of Brown鈥檚 prose.
Business management website Bnet worried that publishing such information could erode consumer trust. Amazon notes on its website that it doesn鈥檛 show which customers made the highlights.
I do find the idea that such information is being tracked post-purchase a little odd, almost as if the supermarkets tracking my food-buying habits were also measuring whether I made omelets or scrambles once I got my eggs home. But I also admit to being curious about just what the information means. In my life, highlighting was restricted to academics, useful mainly for biology notes. It wouldn鈥檛 have occurred to me to underline a passage from a novel or a general-interest read.
Am I in the minority here, or do people highlight differently on an electronic reader than they do using neon markers on paper? The next time I see someone reading a print copy of 鈥淥utliers鈥� or 鈥淭he Lost Symbol鈥� I鈥檒l be looking over their shoulders to see if any phrases leap off the page.
Rebekah Denn blogs at .
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