Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo offer different ways to monitor the progress in your favorite eBook. Some rely on the overall percentage left in a specific chapter, while others display a total reading time. Good e-Reader looked into the most popular ways people like to monitor their own reading progress and would like to give you a sense of our data.
829 eBook readers took part in our latest poll and there were two different options that people preferred the most. 35.95% (298 votes) admitted they loved physical page numbers, while said they liked total percentage read.
When you read a print book, you consciously or subconsciously track your progress by sensing the ratio of the pages read to the pages yet to be read. We all grew up reading print and the tactile progress is something that is second nature. I think the main reason why physical page numbers and total percentage read gives us the modern equivalent of the print experience.
There were a few other options that people seemed to dig, such as progress bar 10.98% (91 votes), minutes left in a chapter 10.62% (88 votes) and time left in the book 6.15% (51 votes).
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
