The txtr beagle was designed to be a stripped-down and simplified eReader⁰.

As far as I can tell, it never shipped. There were a few review units sent out but I can't find any evidence of consumers getting their hands on one. Also, that £8 price was the subsidised price when purchased with a mobile contract. Their website ceased working long ago.

But it got me intrigued. Moore's law is supposed to drive down the cost of electronics. So where are all the dirt-cheap eReaders?

The cheapest Kindle for sale on Amazon UK right now is about £100. Back in 2012, it was about £70. Taking inflation into account, that price has stayed static. Brands like Kobo are also in the £100 to £150 range.

About the cheapest retail eReader is the PocketBook Lux 4 for £85 or the (terribly reviewed) Woxter Scriba for £70.

AliExpress has loads of second-hand and obsolete models at cheap-ish prices. But a surprising dearth of new eReaders.

Going wholesale, Alibaba has a range of models, some of which clock in at around £30.

But, of course, that's before shipping and tax. They won't come with any manufacturer's warranty and don't expect any software updates. Also, good luck getting accessories!

So what's stopping new eReaders being released at a cheap(er) price? I think it comes down to four main things.

Reading is a niche hobby

Around 40% of UK adults didn't read a single book last year. That survey combines reading books and listening to audiobooks. Of the 60% who do read/listen, about 14% primarily listen. Of those that read, around 60% do so on paper books.

If reading is niche, reading electronically is a tiny niche! This is somewhat of a chicken-and-egg argument. If an eReader were the same cost as a mass-market paperback, I'm sure many more paper-book readers would become converts.

The whole point of an eInk reader is that it is a distraction-free environment. Yeah, you could scroll TikTok on one, but it isn't a pleasant experience. An eReader is designed for one thing only, unlike a phone or tablet. Do enough people want to carry yet-another-bloody-device just for reading?

eInk is expensive

The company which makes eInk hold several patents on the process. They're not a patent troll; they're building a business and selling mega-hectares of the stuff. Understandably, they have an interest in keeping prices high. They don't want to cannibalise their own market.

A basic 6 inch screen with wiring costs around £20 wholesale - that's from Alibaba, so doesn't include tax and shipping. That's before you've added any electronics or a operating system.

Speaking of which…

Android is a bottleneck

The promise of the Android Open Source Project was a free Operating System for anyone to use. The reality has been a little different. Most people want to be able to use basic Android functionality - like download operating system updates or reading apps. But Google doesn't allow that for eInk devices.

As I understand it, Google requires Android devices to have colour screens and, so I've read, won't certify eInk eReaders for newer versions of Android.

So manufacturers have to source parts which have drivers for older versions of Android. Or they have to develop their own OSes.

Books are fungible

Back when Apple sold iPods, they knew that the majority of purchasers would buy MP3s direct from Apple. The perfect symbiotic relationship! But the walled-gardens cracked and now people can buy their music from anywhere.

Amazon keeps this model for its eBooks. Unless you're prepared to get technical, you can only read Amazon books on your Amazon Kindle paid for with your Amazon wallet.

Games consoles are often sold at a loss because the manufacturer knows they'll make it up in game sales and subscriptions.

A low-price manufacturer is unlikely to also run a book store and wouldn't be able to cross-subsidise their hardware with content sales.

Alternatives

Some people have tried building open source eReaders but they're either abandoned, not suitable for production, or ridiculously expensive.

Buying second hand is relatively cheap - often under £50. But eInk screens can be brittle, and older ones may have scratches or cracks which are effectively unrepairable.

How cheap is cheap?

I'd love a £8 eReader. Something I could throw in a pocket and not worry about damaging. An eReader which was the same price as a hardback book - around £20 - would be amazing.

But I don't think we'll get there soon. The monopoly on screen technologies sets a retail floor of around £30, before the rest of the hardware is taken into account. Niche hardware is viable - but only with decent OS support. Other than Kobo and Amazon, no book retailer wants to stray outside their core competency to develop and subsidise hardware.

So I guess it's buy second-hand, or wait for the patents to expire.

Here's a rough and ready Python script which will tell you when any the books on your wishlist have dropped below a certain amount.

Prerequisites

1. Install kobodl following their guide.
2. Log in with your account by running kobodl user add
3. Check that the configuration file is saved in the default location /home/YOURUSERNAME/.config/kobodl.json

Get your wishlist

The kobodl function GetWishList() takes a list of users and returns a generator. The generator contains the book's name and author. The price is a string (for example 5.99 GBP) so needs to be split at the space.

Here's a quick proof of concept:

import kobodl
wishlist = kobodl.book.actions.GetWishList( kobodl.globals.Settings().UserList.users )
for book in wishlist:
    print( book.Title + " - "  + book.Author + " " + book.Price.split()[0] )

Sort the wishlist

Using Pandas, the data can be added to a dataframe and then sorted by price:

import kobodl
import pandas as pd

#   Set up the lists
items  = []
prices = []
ids    = []

wishlist = kobodl.book.actions.GetWishList( kobodl.globals.Settings().UserList.users )

for book in wishlist:
    items.append( book.Title + " - "  + book.Author )
    prices.append( float( book.Price.split()[0] ) )
    ids.append( book.RevisionId )

#   Place into a DataFrame
all_items = zip( ids, items, prices )
book_prices = pd.DataFrame( list(all_items), columns = ["ID", "Name", "Price"])
book_prices = book_prices.reset_index()  

#   Get books cheaper than three quid
cheap_df = book_prices[ book_prices["Price"] < 3 ]

Create the Message

This will write the body text of the email. It gives you the price, book details, and a search link to buy the book.

from urllib.parse import quote_plus

#   Search Prefix
website = "https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/search?query="

#   Email Body
message = ""

for index, row in cheap_df.sort_values("Price").iterrows():
    name  = row["Name"]
    price = str(row["Price"])
    link = website + quote_plus( name )
    message += "£" + price + " - " + name + "\n" + link + "\n\n"

Send an Email

Python makes it fairly easy to send an email - assuming you have a co-operative mailhost.

import smtplib
from email.message import EmailMessage

#   Send Email
def send_email(message):
    email_user = 'you@example.com'
    email_password = 'P@55w0rd'
    to = 'destination@example.com'
    msg = EmailMessage()
    msg.set_content(message)
    msg['Subject'] = "Kobo price drops"
    msg['From'] = email_user
    msg['To'] = to
    server = smtplib.SMTP_SSL('example.com', 465)
    server.ehlo()
    server.login(email_user, email_password)
    server.send_message(msg)
    server.quit()

send_email( message )

Setting the settings

When running as a script, it is necessary to ensure the settings are correctly initialised.

from kobodl.settings import Settings

my_settings = Settings()
kobodl.Globals.Settings = my_settings

The End Result

I have a cron job which runs this every morning. It sends an email like this:

Next Steps

Some possible ideas. If you can code these, let me know!

• Save the prices so it sees if there's been a drop since yesterday.
• Compare prices to Amazon for eBook Arbitrage.
• Automatically buy any book that hits 99p.

Happy reading!

1. Are you faster at speaking or typing?
2. Are you faster at reading or listening?

Lots of us now use Siri, Alexa, Bixby, and the like because it is quicker to speak than type. For long-form wordsmithing - it's still probably easier to type-and-edit than it is to speak-then-edit. And the way humans speak is markedly different from how they write.

But the bottleneck has always been that listening to speech is slower than reading text.

The average reading speed is around 238 words per minute. Obviously there are a lot of caveats around the age of the reader, the difficulty of the material, whether one is reading for leisure or work. But it will do as a comparator.

The average speaking speed is around 150 words per minute. Again, that depends on the age of the speaker, urgency of their talk, familiarity with the language, and so on.

Therefore it is faster to read academic papers rather than to listen to academic lectures. Case closed!

Except…

There's a fascinating new paper out - Learning in double time: The effect of lecture video speed on immediate and delayed comprehension.

Here's the quote I found most interesting - with emphasis added:

Collectively, the present experiments indicate that increased video speed (up to 2x) does not negatively impact learning outcomes and watching at faster speeds can be a more efficient use of study time.

Thus, as long as to-be-remembered information can be effectively perceived and encoded, learning outcomes may not be affected by playback speed.

However, previous work has indicated that speech comprehension begins to decline at around 275 words per minute (Foulke & Sticht, 1969; see also Goldhaber, 1970; Pastore & Ritzhaupt, 2015; Vemuri et al., 2004) and the videos in the current study exceeded this threshold when played at 2x speed.

Although the elevated speech rates at 2x speed may initially be less comprehensible to students, researchers have been able to train participants to understand speech at rates up to 475 WPM (Orr et al., 1965).

Therefore, with practice, higher rates of speech may not be completely incomprehensible and since 85% of students reported watching lecture videos at quicker than normal speeds (see Figure 3a), they may be better able to process the material as a result of experience.

I guess this shouldn't come as a surprise to me. I tend to watch my MSc lectures at 1.75x with subtitles - and have been doing the same with podcasts and tutorial videos for years. Looks like I am in the majority.

If the average person speaks at ~150 Words Per Minute, increasing playback speed to 1.5x gives a listening rate of ~225 WPM. That's about the same as reading speed.

Going to 475 WPM means listening at 3x normal speed.

My mate Léonie Watson is blind and has written extensively about the use of text-to-speech technology. Because she listens to a synthetic voice, with predictable and consistent pronunciation, she's able to listen at about 520 WPM! That's 3.5x faster than the speech of a biological human.

I'm not suggesting that you can speed-listen your way through any complicated topic and retain perfect understanding of subject and nuance. But it is becoming clear that synchronous teaching has limitations when it comes to efficiently teaching people. There's no substitute for being able to stop an expert mid-lecture and saying "sorry Prof, I don't get that - could you please help me understand?" But the reality is, most people never stick their hand up in class. So listening to lectures on playback - at double speed - is simply a better "user experience" for the student.

Learning, of course, isn't just listening to people drone on in front of a blackboard. The student still needs to do the exercises, write their essays, consolidate their knowledge, reflect on what they've learned, and so on.

But the ability to "speed" your way through a (well edited and professionally recorded) lecture is something to be welcomed. It gives students more time to spend on their studies with, apparently, no ill effects.

Our previous trip was a 3 week road-trip through Australia, so this time I opted for an all-inclusive break in the Canaries at an adults-only hotel. I spent a week lying in the sunshine, eReader in hand, pausing only for the occasional cocktail.

I thoroughly recommend this sort of holiday. If you have a "staycation", there will be all sorts of little jobs to distract you. Laundry, phone calls, making your own food. Having nothing to do, no commitments, is a superb way to read without distraction. I often find that if I read a book over several days, I get confused. I forget characters, or can't remember the conclusion to an academic argument. Reading all at once is such a joy.

(Aside: yes, I know I'm privileged. I have the resources to fly somewhere warm, a generous leave policy at work, and am happily child-free.)

Something I discovered about reading books in quick succession is that I need to alternate my reading. If I read two fiction books in a row, my mind treats them as a single novel. So I flip between fiction and non-fiction. I also swap fonts between books to help with the transition.

This year, I'm only reading books by women. Looking back over my previous reviews, I mostly read male authors. So this is an attempt to correct this imbalance.

(OK, I've cheated once this year by reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld Imaginarium - but that's a picture-book, so doesn't count. Right?)

If you'd like to see what's on my to-read pile (or want to buy me a book) my reading list is on Amazon.

Anyway, here are the eleven books what I read...

The Entrepreneurial State - Mariana Mazzucato

★★★★☆

This book debunks the myth of the State as a large bureaucratic organization that can at best facilitate the creative innovation which happens in the dynamic private sector. It argues that in the history of modern capitalism the State has not only fixed market failures but also shaped and created markets, actively investing in new technologies and sectors that private investors only later find the courage to move into.

A profoundly important book. Your iPhone - and most other high tech stuff - is based off state-sponsored research. For every Venture Capitalist saying "the free market made this possible" there is an army of publicly funded developers. Sometimes, in the case of GPS, a literal army!

It makes a compelling case for the funding of basic and experimental research and development. We need long-term planning, rather than short-term profit chasing.

My only criticisms of this book are based on me not reading many academic books. I don't understand how a reference that just says "Smith (1904)" is helpful to anyone. It is also repetitive - I suspect because it is a collection of related essays, rather than a unified book. I also wonder whether it is normal for an author to continually cite their own work.

Either way, it clearly presents a well-researched argument and exhaustively demonstrates its veracity.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site Publisher

Just One Damned Thing After Another - Jodi Taylor

★★★⯪☆

The first book in the bestselling Chronicles of St Mary's series which follows a group of tea-soaked disaster magnets as they hurtle their way around History.

This is stupid amounts of fun! A roaring adventure through time. Doesn't bother getting hung-up on paradoxes - or science - but goes straight for the heart of history. Historians!

Specifically, historians fightin', drinkin', and shaggin' their way through the space-time continuum.

There are several points where the book could have ended satisfactorily, with suitable cliff-hangers. But each subsequent chapter brought more fun. I'm not sure I have the energy to read all 9 novels in one sitting - but I'm looking forward to rejoining the gang on my next holiday.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff

★⯪☆☆☆

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a deeply-reasoned examination of the threat of unprecedented power free from democratic oversight. As it explores this new capitalism's impact on society, politics, business, and technology, it exposes the struggles that will decide both the next chapter of capitalism and the meaning of information civilization. It shows how we can protect ourselves and our communities and ensure we are the masters of the digital rather than its slaves.

Possibly the worst book I've read all year. It would be twice as good if it were half as long. It would be a hundred times better if the author hadn't confused polysyllabic words with an effective argument.

The worst thing is - I think I probably agree with most of this book. But it is so turgid and (I hate to use this word) hysterical that I don't think it will produce meaningful change.

The author clearly sets out how surveillance has become the lifeblood for modern internet companies. I fully agree with her analysis. Although it is written in such a convoluted fashion that I doubt most people will make it through the first few chapters.

Next, it moves on to advertising. Again, I agree that targetting advertising is a nuisance. I don't think it is particularly evil - but I block it all anyway. There's no argument presented - we just have to take it on faith that targetting is bad.

I found myself skimming large chunks of chapters in an attempt to find a sentence which made sense. Here's a typical bit of academic-babble:

We may yet see the founding of a new synthesis for a third modernity in which a genuine inversion and its social compact are institutionalized as principles of a new rational digital capitalism aligned with a society of individuals and supported by democratic institutions.

I've read that several times and I'm still no closer to deciphering it. The whole book is like that. Purple-prose utterly lacking in simplicity.

Another section deals with population control. We're told that in the future, our cars will be tied into surveillance systems. If we drive dangerously, or miss a payment, they'll be disabled.

At which point, I found myself thinking "...good?" I mean... if you're a bad driver, what's wrong with putting up your insurance premiums? If you're lumped in to a high-premium demographic, why should you have to subsidise the prices of your riskier cohort? Perhaps you can explain the problem to me - because the author didn't.

The book mentions the story of the repossession agent who helped crowdfund car repayments for a delinquent couple. This was presented as a heart-warming tale - but I found it chilling. Rather than the impartial laws of mathematics, people have to be telegenic and sympathetic in order get out of debt. Somehow, that's presented as the preferable option.

Finally... Well, there is no finally. There's no list of tips for how users can protect themselves (download Firefox and use an adblocker would be my advice). It's just a pure emotional howl of rage. Perhaps that's cathartic for some, but it doesn't change the world.

This book is important. Far too important to be this badly written.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

Sorcerer to the Crown - Zen Cho

★★★★☆

Winner of the 2016 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Newcomer. Shortlisted for the 2016 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novel. Shortlisted for the 2016 Locus First Novel Award. Sorcerer to the Crown is the first in Zen Cho's thrilling magical adventure series, the Sorcerer Royal Trilogy.

This was an absolute delight to read. Magic, racism, and sexism, wrapped together with international politics.

It is, basically, fan-fiction for the "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" universe. With a dash of Neil Gaiman's Stardust. In courtly Olde Englande magicians preen themselves despite the fact that English Magic Is In Peril!

Yes, it is derivative, but it is so much fun that I'm prepared to forgive it. There are no big surprises - the baddies are obvious bad and the plucky young girl is rewarded for her vim and vigour. It's an entertaining universe to spend time in.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

The Guilty Feminist - Deborah Frances-White

★★★★⯪

Why do we find it so hard to say 'No'? What does poker teach us about power structures? How can feminism be more inclusive? The Guilty Feminist will challenge you, reassure you and empower you to see the world differently.

A fantastic book. Even if you've listened religiously to The Guilty Feminist Podcast, or seen the author's solo shows, there's plenty of new material in here.

It's a powerful and inclusive piece of work. Even if you think you know everything there is to know about modern feminism, I guarantee you'll find something new - and breathtaking - in there.

It'll get you angry, fired-up, and hopeful for the future.

I stopped highlighting passages halfway through, because it feels like every other sentence could be pasted on a t-shirt. This is the one which resonated the most for me:

If you’ve been raised with running water and had it every day of your life, you will feel entitled to it. Hot and cold water from a tap doesn’t occur in nature, so this is a privilege you’ve always known that’s come to feel like a right. If your water got turned off today, you’d phone the council. If it wasn’t back on in forty-eight hours you’d be tweeting, and if it wasn’t restored in a week you’d be writing angry letters. At no point would you think, ‘Well, I guess we don’t have running water any more. Where’s the closest river? I guess I’ll have to walk down there with a jug on my head.’ Although many people around the world live like that every day, it would almost certainly never be acceptable to you because running water is your standard, your normal, your expectation. Entitlement is the residue of privilege.

Buy it now: Amazon

Alone Together - Sherry Turkle

★★★★★

Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But this relentless connection leads to a deep solitude. MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down.

A profound and moving book. It neatly describes how online socialising tickles some parts of our needy brains, without actually fulfilling them. At times, this book is touchingly naive - we're no closer to having the social robots that it predicted - but the sentiment is completely correct. We all want to be loved and will anthropomorphise anything we can.

The strength comes from the narrative encounters with the book's subjects. Each statistic is neatly paired with an emotional anecdote.

It will absolutely change the relationship you have with the little dopamine-spurting icons you see in your social media feed.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

Sapience - Alexis Lantgen

★★★★★

What kind of life will we find in the depths of Europa's Oceans? What kind of life will we allow an AI with human level intelligence? The ten stories in Sapience: A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories explore these questions and many more.

A delightful - and weird - collection of sci-fi shorts. All loosely tied together by the looming moon of Jupiter.

A couple were a little too grim and visceral for my liking. But each was compelling and perfectly composed.

Buy it now: Amazon Publisher

The Pursuit of William Abbey - Claire North

★★★★⯪

A young and naive English doctor, William Abbey, witnesses the lynching of a local boy by the white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William. William begins to understand what the curse means when the shadow of the dead boy starts following him across the world. It never stops, never rests. It can cross oceans and mountains. And if it catches him, the person he loves most in the world will die.

I love Claire North's writing. This latest novel follows her regular template - a person with uncanny abilities has to survive a world which wants to abuse their talents.

It's a long and winding tale, almost a travelogue. It gradual ratchets up the tension and horror building to a satisfying conclusion.

There's also a lovely bit of fan service which vzcyvrf gung zbfg bs ure obbxf gnxr cynpr va gur fnzr havirefr!

Perhaps my only criticism is that it's a little long. I guess it just represents excellent value for money.

Well worth reading her previous novels. "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" is sublime. "The Sudden Appearance of Hope" is excellent. "The End of The Day" is magical. And 84k is pretty good too!

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong

★★⯪☆☆

Karen Armstrong's concise yet compelling investigation into the history of myth takes us from the Palaeolithic period and the mythology of the hunters right up to the 'Great Western Transformation' of the last 500 years. She shows us that the history of myth is the history of humanity, and our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand the world, link us to our ancestors and each other.

A crisp and meticulously referenced work. But, as the title suggests, all-too-brief. It tracks the development of Palaeolithic myths to their modern counterparts. But it feels like the reader is already expected to know the details of each one.

It left me hungry for more - which I guess is the point. But at times I felt I was reading the Wikipedia excerpts of major works.

Buy it now: Amazon

Something Beginning With - Sarah Salway

★☆☆☆☆

Written in brief entries from ‘Ambition’ to ‘Zzzzz’ Salway's confident debut novel chronicles the existential ups and downs of British 20-something Verity Bell. The alphabetically arranged mini-chapters make for an inventive and episodic narrative, as Verity muses on her career .

For some reason I purchased this in 2013 and left it 7 years before reading. I wish I'd left it 70.

I don't usually read sappy romantic / emotionally manipulative novels. And this is why. It's a sad and pathetic story about a set of sad and pathetic characters. I felt nothing but contempt for them and their predicaments.

I suppose, if you want to feel smugly superior to someone making worse life-choices than you, this book would do the trick.

Buy it now: Amazon

The Memory Illusion - Julia Shaw

★★★★★

In The Memory Illusion, forensic psychologist and memory expert Dr Julia Shaw draws on the latest research to show why our memories so often play tricks on us - and how, if we understand their fallibility, we can actually improve their accuracy. The result is an exploration of our minds that both fascinating and unnerving, and that will make you question how much you can ever truly know about yourself.

Possibly the most disturbing book I've read. Your mind is nothing. Your memories are mailable. Everything you think you remember can be trivially rewritten. Oh, and Dr Shaw can scramble your brain with nothing more than her superpowers words.

I've had a hard time reading academic books recently. So I was most encouraged by the intro:

I live by this philosophy of explanatory parsimony myself, though of course it does sometimes come at the cost of explanatory adequacy. In other words, when I explain concepts by using analogies, stories or simplifications, I always risk losing some of the nuances of the inherently complex issues under discussion.

The book is beautifully laid out, and has a light tone which pushes through some of the drier aspects of neuroscience. I loved the way it ran through the history of memory - right up to cutting edge research.

I completely recommend this book. And I have fond memories of reading it. I think.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

He also has a "cut scenes" repository where you can see the chapters which were cruelly cut by his editor.

There's even a director's commentary available. Along with behind the scenes material, pre-production artwork and a huge array of special features.

He has, to my mind, redefined the novel. His approach to literature is as big a jump as BluRay is to cine-film.

The only slight problem is that it's all analogue!  To upgrade your book, you need to print off the pages, cut them out, find some glue and stick them in your book.

With the latest innovations in eReaders, we have the chance to radically redefine the novel. Think about a technically advanced DVD like "Moulin Rouge" or some Doctor Who DVDs.  Here's a sample of what they can do differently from a regular VHS.

• Subtitles.  Not just in multiple languages - but also for use as trivia tracks.
• Soundtracks. Again, not just multiple languages - but also commentaries, music only, sound effects only.
• Branching video.  The ability to watch a scene and immediately see the "behind the scenes" work that went in to it.
• Alternate video.  Some Doctor Who DVDs allow you to see the original special effects or newer CGI effects.
• Interactivity.  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone contains interactive games for you to play.

So, what can we do with the humble novel in order to make the eBook into a new art form?  Here are some of my ideas - I'd love to hear some of yours.

Obvious

• Interactivity.  I used to love "Choose Your Own Adventure" books when I was young.  You very rarely see them for adults, I can't think why.  There is a "risk" that an interactive eBook would end up like Zork - just a text adventure game.  There are some fabulous examples of Interactive Fiction over at http://www.ifcomp.org/.
• Notes.  Not just the ability to write your own notes - but to read others.  A "Writer's Commentary" which you can access at key parts of the book.  The Cliff Notes or other explanatory text if you're finding the book too difficult.
• Upgrading.  If the author has made a mistake, or released a newer version, you should be able to update your book to fix any plot holes.
• Revising. Suppose a book contains predictions for the fabulous futuristic year 2010.  Let the author upgrade your book to note which predictions she got right.
• "Alternate Edits" much like a DVD, a way to access cut chapters, perhaps showing the book as edited by different editors.

Social

Sharing books with each other is a joyful pursuit.  But there are ways to make it better.

Imagine if your eReader contains a social network built around books.  It could let you know...

• Joe just purchased "The Atheists Guide to Christmas"
• Fred rated "Child of the Hive" as 4* out of 5*.
• Alice wrote some notes on "The Colour of Magic"
• Carol finished reading "War and Peace" after only 59 weeks.

Purchasing

Any of the above could be implemented as "optional extras".  Buy the book for €5.00 and buy the "missing scenes" for 25c. There could be even more uses.

• At the end of a book, there could be links to buy the next book in the series.
• If a book is mentioned - say, as a reference - there could be a link to purchase it.
• Amazon style recommendations based on what you've read and how you've rated it.

What Else

I've a feeling that I've only pricked the surface of future books.  What else would you like to see from your books?