Live data from Hacker News

Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

fastcompany.com

61–70 of 81 posts

Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

#61

Am I the only one that's skeptical of the claim that "300,000 people are reading books this way"? That there are 300k people who are now suddenly "reading" books that have been available in a huge variety of formats in the public domain for years because they show up on Instagram? Show me the actual usage data. How many of these 300k got past page 3? The design is nice, the presentation is good, yes, but I doubt very…

> Am I the only one that's skeptical of the claim that "300,000 people are reading books this way"?

You are not. Instagram is likely set up to count views of a post, not full reads.

Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

#62
post #25

Try it yourself, it’s pretty cool like an instant ebook. Metamorphosis: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyMTE0ODA2MzA3... The Raven: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTYyMTk5MTcwMTYz... Alice In Wonderland: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTQ0MTEwMzE5MTg4... — I find the top comment quite cynical, it’s literally the same as reading text on an ebook or even paperback. IMO once you…

> it’s literally the same as reading text on an ebook or even paperback Not literally. On an ebook I can add inline notes and then jump to them later (I occasionally do this when a passage sparks an idea). And search text.

What ebook reader are you using? I've added a few notes to some books on my Paperwhite Kindle and it's a terrible experience. I have no idea where the notes are and, depending on the document type, it may or may not be synced to all the places I read Kindle books.

The iPad with the Pencil seems promising. If I could underline and scribble notes (that are recognized and indexed) it might be good enough to move me off of Kindle and their great e-ink screens. I have no idea if iBooks does that though.

Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

#63
post #57

Am I the only one that's skeptical of the claim that "300,000 people are reading books this way"? That there are 300k people who are now suddenly "reading" books that have been available in a huge variety of formats in the public domain for years because they show up on Instagram? Show me the actual usage data. How many of these 300k got past page 3? The design is nice, the presentation is good, yes, but I doubt very…

>now suddenly "reading" books that have been available in a huge variety of formats in the public domain for years because they show up on Instagram? I can't speak to the 300k number but an increase in readership is plausible because I saw how reducing friction to consume a book can massively change reading habits. E.g. my friend with the new Kindle finally got around to reading the classics like "Madame Bovary" and…

I hear you, but I remain skeptical about any sort of significant uptick in adoption of, not of e-reading in general, but of these particular books.

You mention a friend who read chose to read "Madame Bovary" and "Anna Karenina" upon discovering a cheap and convenient e-book format. Those books are classics in the Western Canon, yes, but they are also slogs, by some measures.

The other thing that happened, and continues to happen in parallel with the explosion of e-reading tech, is an explosion of other things to (copyrighted) read, written in the modern colloquial, (perhaps more) relevant to modern times. The rise of the tepid, self-published novel on Amazon is the best example of this.

I can believe that there is a latent desire out there for more good books to read or a cool new tech to use to read them, but I doubt very much that very old books in the public domain sate that thirst in any significant way. I think your friend is in the minority.

Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

#64

It is likely that if you did an experiment that compared retention and understanding of reading with the real books and these Instagram Stories, the readers of real books would trounce the Instagram readers. I suppose that something is better than nothing but at a certain point, I also wonder, what is the point of doing this? I wonder how many Instagram readers will drop their habits and read more? I also wonder how…

Any given Instagram reader may not have read a real book in their life - or maybe they are avid readers who read constantly. All the same, there will always be readers and non-readers.

Literary snobs today imagine a past world where everybody was constantly discussing the finer points of the classic masterpieces every day of their lives. In reality only about 12% of the global population in 1820 was literate. And that's just baseline, not to speak of people who actually spent time reading difficult, thoughtful, full-length books.

Thoreau has a great passage in Walden (published in the 1850s) where he complains about people knowing how to read, yet spending their time reading garbage romance novels instead of classics like the Iliad. I think the complaint of people "reading books" on Instagram comes from the exact same place. It's a timeless problem, which is not really a problem.

Even when global literacy reaches 100%, there will still be a very small percentage of people who are hardcore readers. There is a certain kind of person who will sit down with a big heavy paper book and read it cover to cover, and they are not a common species among humans. It's something you are born with, or something that you gain in very early childhood anyway, and nothing Instagram does will ever change that.

So there's really no use in complaining about it one way or the other. Instagrammers will instagram. Some of them will read real books too, and others will not.

Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

#65
post #25

Try it yourself, it’s pretty cool like an instant ebook. Metamorphosis: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyMTE0ODA2MzA3... The Raven: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTYyMTk5MTcwMTYz... Alice In Wonderland: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTQ0MTEwMzE5MTg4... — I find the top comment quite cynical, it’s literally the same as reading text on an ebook or even paperback. IMO once you…

[deleted]

Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

#66
If you'd like to do something similar, but for your blog (or any website really) -- I wrote an app that produces segmented videos in both Instagram Story / square aspect ratios. It's called StoryScroll => https://neal.rs/app

Here's a demo video => https://youtu.be/u1k1JZtDzuU

Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

#67
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We couldn't have copied quotes or table of contents in a physical book. Photocopiers have existed for quite a while.

And you can screenshot an Instagram story...

But can you easily take a highlighter and highlight sections, scribble notes and annotations on the margins, cross things out, doodle on a screenshot when you're bored?

Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

#68
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can screenshot an Instagram story...

But can you easily take a highlighter and highlight sections, scribble notes and annotations on the margins, cross things out, doodle on a screenshot when you're bored?

yeah, you open the screenshot in the photos app...

but, still, I agree that the idiom of the device is made worse in this context.

Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

#69
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can you easily take a highlighter and highlight sections, scribble notes and annotations on the margins, cross things out, doodle on a screenshot when you're bored?

yeah, you open the screenshot in the photos app... but, still, I agree that the idiom of the device is made worse in this context.

About the only one of those that's maybe easyish to do is highlighting things. Working with text in just about any photo editing app is a pain in the ass, scribbling and doodling is pretty impossible with a mouse or touch screen(though if you can do this well I commend you) and all those things take longer and are more difficult than just picking up a pen and doing it.

Re: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram

#70
post #61

Am I the only one that's skeptical of the claim that "300,000 people are reading books this way"? That there are 300k people who are now suddenly "reading" books that have been available in a huge variety of formats in the public domain for years because they show up on Instagram? Show me the actual usage data. How many of these 300k got past page 3? The design is nice, the presentation is good, yes, but I doubt very…

> Am I the only one that's skeptical of the claim that "300,000 people are reading books this way"? You are not. Instagram is likely set up to count views of a post, not full reads.

Also, how do you find the page you let go at? Sounds improbable anyone read any of the books ...
Post reply on HN