Reading matters

I decided a while back that I had no need of affiliation with Facebook, Xing or LinkedIn, not compulsion to volunteer so much personal information about my habits and predilections. Not that I am naive, I am well aware that for Google I am as a blogger, email and hangout user quite transparent. It struck me some time last week that Amazon also knows a lot about me, in particular as a reader of Kindle e-books.

When I thought further about this I started to wonder if all that Amazon knows about its Kindle readers could be made available to individual writers using the platform. 

I imagined a dialogue with my own personal Amazonian guide (whom I prefer to picture as lithe and ethereal rather than muscular and domineering).

Q: I see that reading an average length novel takes you usually about three sessions.
A: It can be longer when I'm reading German, but English language stories are almost always good for three evenings.
Q: Your reading almost always takes place between 19 and 22 hours.
A: Correct. Reading has replaced television as recreational 'content consumption' but my schedule remains as before, when I would switch on at about seven in the evening and switch off when the main newscast ended at a quarter past ten.

• Thus my Amazonian could give the writer of any Kindle e-book an overview of how his or her work is accessed. What proportion of the overall readership reads his or her story (a) during the morning commute, (b) during the lunch break, (c) during the evening commute, (d) as the evening's main entertainment or (e) just prior to sleeping and probably in bed!

Q: Do you find it easy to feel when it's right to stop reading and bring a session to an end?
A: With some well-constructed books it is entirely possible to feel instinctively that the author intends there to be a break...not just the close of a chapter but the end of something like the 'Act' of a well-planned drama.

• This data could inform a writer of where people tend to close the book as they progress through it in its entirety.  If many readers take a break at the same point it could confirm that an underlying structure is inherent to the work. Of course this does not take into account readers on a train realizing that they have arrived at their station or those under the duvet who simply fall asleep.

Q: When do you return to an e-book you have at some previous point started reading?
A: Most often on the very next evening, since I am a creature of habit.
Q: When you return to the story, do you go back a few pages to catch up with the narrative?
A: If I feel the need, yes. But the best stories are those which are so present in my mind that I have no need for a recap.

• The writer will be pleased if he or she can have confirmation that the storytelling qualifies as a 'page turner', conducive to binge reading and remaining in the reader's awareness beyond the time actually spent reading.

Q: Given that your average reading speed can be extrapolated, are sudden accelerations a sign that you are skimming certain passages of a novel without reading them properly?
A: Certainly. If a detailing of sadistic violence or extreme physical suffering goes on and on I shall speed through four of five screens without reading the text closely. The same goes for passages devoted to inept and long winded blow-by-blow descriptions of sexual antics.

• What writer would not be grateful to know which passages fail to hold the readers' attention?

Q: When you finish a book, how do you pick your next Kindle purchase?
A: I am happiest when reading an anthology or collection by a particular author. Then I will buy the next story in the series. In tis respect Amazon could do a lot better in providing guidance to story chronology for those of us who value seriality.

Q: Do you buy books which you then do not read to the end?
A: It is extremely rare that I do not finish a book I have bought. This is partly because I hate the feeling of having wated even the modest sum of $ 1.99! I guess I tend to 'grade' the books I read according to the American system... (A) awesome, (B) brilliant, (C) competent and (D) deficient. Even with a book scoring only a D grade I will persevere to the end. If I give up on a book then the writer has failed... (F) fucking useless.

• Some writers need to know that they should not give up their day jobs.