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You've finally finished the book your co-worker recommended, so what to read next?
你终于读完了同事推荐的那本书，接下来要读什么呢？
If it is 5 a.m., chances are that you're reaching for a romance novel -- especially if you're in Texas or Georgia. By early morning, thrillers might start to look more appealing. And if Philip K. Dick is your favorite author, books about beer are probably more up your alley than anything about wine or liquor.
如果当时是凌晨五点，你很可能会选一本言情小说――特别是如果你住在得克萨斯或佐治亚州的话。到了清晨，惊悚小说或许会开始显得更有吸引力。如果菲利普・K.・迪克(Philip K. Dick)是你最喜爱的作家，关于啤酒而非葡萄酒或烈酒的书籍可能更符合你的口味。
These are some of the insights from Scribd Inc. and Oyster, two startups that offer unlimited e-book rentals for a monthly subscription fee. Scribd, Oyster and Entitle Books -- which just launched in December -- are tracking reader behavior in hopes of churning out recommendations of exactly what you'll want to pick up next.
这些都是来自Scribd及Oyster公司的见解，这两家初创企业以按月付订阅费的模式提供无限量的电子书租阅服务。这两家公司和刚刚在去年12月上线的Entitle Books都在跟踪读者的阅读行为，希望借此就读者接下来想选什么书做出精准的推荐。
About 50% of the U.S. population owns a dedicated e-reader, according to a Pew Research study released last month. In addition, 28% read an e-book last year, up from 23% the previous year.
皮尤研究中心(Pew Research)在1月份发布的研究指出，美国约有50%的人拥有一部专门的电子书阅读器。此外，去年有28%的人读过一本电子书，高于前年23%的比例。
The services are expanding. Scribd, a San Francisco-based site that started selling monthly e-book subscriptions in October, announced Jan. 22 that its app is available on Amazon's Kindle Fire and Kindle Paperwhite. After running exclusively on Apple's operating system, New York-based Oyster plans to expand to Android later this year. And Entitle is considering adding an all-you-can-read feature to complement its current 'book of the month'-style subscription service.
此类服务还在逐步拓展。Scribd在1月22日宣布，该公司的应用可在亚马逊(Amazon)的Kindle Fire和Kindle Paperwhite上下载。这家总部位于旧金山的网站从去年10月开始推出按月付费的电子书订阅服务。位于纽约的Oyster也计划在今年晚些时候扩展至Android系统，此前它的应用只能在苹果(Apple)的操作系统上运行。此外，Entitle还在考虑新增“所有你能读的书”(all-you-can-read)这一功能，以补充其现有的“本月热门书籍”式的订阅服务。
Subscription services are popular because they 'reduce the emotional burden' of purchasing, says Julie Haddon, Scribd vice president of marketing. Buying a book creates pressure to finish and get your money's worth, she adds. In addition, people might try to save money by buying a cheaper book instead of the one they really want.
Scribd营销副总裁朱莉・哈登(Julie Haddon)指出，订阅服务之所以大行其道，是因为它们可“减轻（买书的）精神负担”。她说，买书会造成带来压力，让人感觉必须把它读完才能物有所值。此外，人们可能会为了省钱而买一本比较便宜的书，而不是去买他们真正想读的书。
The challenge is that the selection of books can be limited. Of the five main publishing houses, only HarperCollins books are available on all three services. Entitle also has a contract with Simon & Schuster. (HarperCollins is a subsidiary of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.) The three also carry books from hundreds of smaller publishers.
这三家公司面临的困难在于可供选择的租阅书数量有限。在美国五大主要出版社中，只有哈珀柯林斯(HarperCollins)的图书是上述这三家企业全都提供的。Entitle还与Simon & Schuster签订了合约。（哈珀柯林斯为新闻集团(News Corp.)的子公司，后者也是《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)的母公司。）这三家电子书租阅公司还提供来自数百家小出版社的图书。
Brian Konash, 34, who works at Web startup Squarespace in Manhattan, joined Oyster two months ago because it didn't cause the buyers' remorse he experienced when purchasing Kindle e-books. 'You've already paid for the service, so you can read as much as you want,' he says. 'With other models, there's that little financial bite each time you want to buy a book and you worry that it's going to be a dud.' Mr. Konash, who has been picking books based on the site's suggestions, predicts he'll read up to 10 more books a year beyond his usual 25.
今年34岁的布赖恩・科纳什(Brian Konash)是曼哈顿网络初创企业Squarespace的职员，他在两个月前订阅了Oyster，因为它不会使他产生买家常有的懊悔感，而他在购买Kindle的电子书时就曾有过这样的感觉。他说：“你已经为这些服务付费，所以你想读多少就能读多少。如果是其他模式的话，每次你想买本书都会有些经济上的小顾虑，而且你还会担心那本书会让你失望。”科纳什一直根据Oyster的建议挑选书籍，他预计自己一年的阅读量会比往常的25本最多可多出10本。
An all-access subscription 'lowers the activation energy for reading,' says Oyster CEO Eric Stromberg. Reading often has a high 'activation energy' because there's a time gap between wanting to read a book and then actually getting your hands on it, he says. 'When you can order a book and instantly get it on your tablet, you can hear about the book and then read it right there,' says Willem van Lancker, Oyster's chief product officer.
Oyster的首席执行长埃里克・斯特龙伯格(Eric Stromberg)称，无限量订阅“会减少激发阅读动力时所需的能量”。他说，阅读往往需要很强的“激发能量”，因为从你想读一本书到真的着手去读它之间有个时间差。该公司首席产品长威廉・范朗克(Willem van Lancker)说：“如果你能在订了一本书后马上就能通过平板电脑收到，那么你可能刚刚听说一本书，就可以马上在平板上阅读。”
'From the publishing perspective, the biggest problem is how to get people to care about a new book,' says Otis Chandler, CEO of Goodreads, a site where people share what they're reading and post recommendations. Goodreads, which was acquired by Amazon in March, uses an algorithm that recommends books that users with similar taste have enjoyed.
Goodreads首席执行长奥蒂斯・钱德勒(Otis Chandler)指出：“从出版的角度看，最大的问题是如何让大家对一本新书产生兴趣。” Goodreads网站为人们分享并推荐自己所读书目提供平台，于去年3月被亚马逊收购。该网站利用某种算法来推荐喜好相似的用户都喜欢读的书。
Oyster and Scribd ask readers to rate books, what they call an 'active signal.' They also track 'passive signals,' such as the percentage of a book that a reader finishes and the click rate, or how many people who are shown a book click through to learn more. The companies use that information among other factors to recommend books.
Oyster 与 Scribd会邀请读者给书评分，这被他们称为“主动信号”。他们还会跟踪“被动信号”，比如某本书被读者读完的比例和点击率，或者看到某本书的人中有多少会点击它去了解更多信息。这些企业就借助此类信息再结合其他因素来推荐图书。
Active signals represent what we wish we read, while passive signals are more honest, says Jared Friedman, Scribd chief technology officer. A lot of people give a 5-star rating to 'The Great Gatsby,' while they devour, but don't necessarily rate, thrillers like 'The Da Vinci Code,' for example. (Scribd declined to discuss data on specific books.)
Scribd首席技术长贾里德・弗里德曼(Jared Friedman)称，主动信号代表我们希望自己去读的书，而被动信号则更为诚实。比如说，许多人会给《了不起的盖茨比》(The Great Gatsby)五星的评分，但他们在专心阅读诸如《达芬奇密码》(The Da Vinci Code)之类的惊悚小说时却不一定会给它们评分。（Scribd拒绝谈论有关具体书籍的数据。）
Other findings: Self-help might be a popular market, yet only about 20% of people who start such a book finish it. More than 80% of people who crack the pages of a mystery novel will find out who did it.
其他发现还包括：励志类书籍或许是个热门领域，但是选择此类图书的读者只有约20%的人会把它读完。阅读悬疑小说的读者有80%以上的人能解开谜底。
People trudge through biographies at 20 pages per hour, while they read at three times that speed for erotica. And higher 'acceleration factor' -- or how much readers speed up as they get closer to finishing -- correlates with higher average rating for a book. One of the highest acceleration factors comes from Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle,' which readers start speeding through at the halfway mark, Mr. Friedman says.
人们阅读自传作品的速度仅为每小时20页，读色情作品的速度则是这个速度的三倍。较高的“加速因子”――即读者快要把书读完时的加速幅度――与书籍较高的平均评分有关。弗里德曼透露，库尔特・冯内古特(Kurt Vonnegut)的《猫的摇篮》(Cat's Cradle)是加速因子最高的作品之一，读者在读到一半时就开始加快阅读速度。
All three companies allow users to hide their reading behavior from other customers, but users can't opt out of their behavior being collected by the company itself. Entitle, however, says it keeps track of browsing and download information only.
上述三家电子书租阅企业全都允许用户向其他用户隐藏自己的阅读行为，但他们无法选择不让这些公司收集他们的阅读行为。不过，Entitle称它只记录用户的浏览和下载信息。
Personalized recommendations drive 10 times more browsing traffic than lists based on themes such as 'globe-trotting memoirs' or 'bad role models' that replicate racks at the front of bookstores, Scribd's Mr. Friedman says. The company is interested in combining algorithms with lists to create a list of best sellers that someone would, based on past reading behavior, find interesting. Another possible approach is to suggest different books or genres depending on time of day to take advantage of what the company knows about time-based preferences.
Scribd的弗里德曼称，与模仿实体书店的排行榜、按照“环游全球回忆录”或“坏榜样”等主题制定的榜单相比，个性化的推荐带来的浏览流量是前者的10倍。该公司有意将算法与排行榜结合在一起，制定一个根据读者以往阅读习惯判断可能会让他们感兴趣的畅销书排行榜。另一个可能的方法是，利用公司掌握的不同时段内读者阅读喜好的变化情况，在一天当中的不同时段推荐不同的书籍或体裁。
At Wilmington, N.C.-based Entitle, the algorithm doesn't just crunch behavior signals, but 'reads' through a book's text to pull out different topics, genres and subjects, says Bryan Batten, chief executive of Entitle, which used to be known as eReatah Inc.
Entitle首席执行长布赖恩・巴滕(Bryan Batten)说，对该公司而言，算法不只是用以分析行为信号，还要“解读”整本书的文本来提取不同的话题、体裁和主题。Entitle的总部位于北卡罗来纳州的威明顿市(Wilmington)，原名为eReatah。
There's also a patent-pending service called 'if these books had a baby,' where users can input two books and find a third with similar themes. For example, the 'baby' of Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22' and Leo Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' is Fyodor Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov,' but the product of 'Catch-22' and Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography is a book called 'Dealers of Lightning,' about engineers at Xerox Corp.
还有一项正在申请专利的服务名为“假如这些书还有后代”(if these books had a baby)，用户输入两本书的书名便可找到第三本主题相似的书。比如说，约瑟夫・海勒(Joseph Heller)的《第二十二条军规》(CATCH-22)与列夫・托尔斯泰(Leo Tolstoy)的《安娜・卡列尼娜》(Anna Karenina)的“后代”就是费奥多尔・陀思妥耶夫斯基(Fyodor Dostoevsky)的《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》(The Brothers Karamazov)，而《第二十二条军规》与沃尔特・艾萨克森(Walter Isaacson)的《乔布斯传》(Steve Jobs)的后代则是《创新未酬》(Dealers of Lightning)，这本书讲述了施乐公司(Xerox Corp.)工程师们的故事。
Entitle operates on a tiered model: two books for $9.99 a month (the most popular plan), three for $14.99, and so on. For customers, the upside is being able to keep the e-books, even if they cancel the service.
Entitle采用了分级模式运营：每月付费9.99美元可读两本书（最受欢迎的方案），付费14.99美元则可读三本书等等。对消费者而言，好处是即使他们取消了服务也能保留这些电子书。
The services, of course, compete with the library. But libraries have had limited e-book offerings and there are often waits for the books. Robert Wolven, co-chair of the American Library Association's Digital Content Working Group, says demand has increased significantly in the past 18 months. He says he doesn't see the startups as a threat.
当然，这些服务与图书馆产生了竞争。图书馆可提供的电子书数量有限，而且往往需要等待才能拿到书。美国图书馆协会(American Library Association)数字内容工作小组(Digital Content Working Group)联席主席罗伯特・沃尔温(Robert Wolven)称，过去18个月中读者的需求急剧增长。尽管如此，他认为那些初创公司并不构成威胁。
While libraries' budget for e-books has been growing, licensing restrictions mean that popular titles often aren't available, says Laura Girmscheid, research manager for the trade publication Library Journal, which recently released its fourth annual report on e-books in libraries. This, combined with holds on e-books, is the largest hurdle preventing people from using library e-books more.
图书馆行业刊物《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal)的调研经理劳拉・吉尔姆沙伊德(Laura Girmscheid)称，尽管图书馆的电子书预算一直在提高，但由于许可限制，他们常常拿不到热门书籍。这个因素，加上电子书的获取有延误，成为阻碍大家更多地利用图书馆电子书的最大障碍。
'It's just not convenient for instant access,' Ms. Girmscheid says.
吉尔姆沙伊德说：“它不方便即时获取。”
