Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Adam J Iser

Abhishek Patnia

Janna Hamaker

Joshua M Goodspeed

Alla Taborisskaya

Tom Killalea

Walter Manching Tseng

Christopher Michael Ellis

Alice Chu

Peter Thomas Killalea

Michael Anthony Frazzini

Michel Leonard Goldstein

Daniel Leng

Victoria A Griffith

Ankur Jain

Mark A Winham

Vaibhav Shankar

Jeff L Belle

Ravi Shankar Thangavel

Described herein are techniques for identifying and displaying key excerpts of a digital work and related key excerpts of other digital works. Key excerpts are identified by evaluating (a) the number of interactions by human readers within each of the key excerpts and (b) the number of reviews that reference each of the key excerpts. Related excerpts from other books can be identified by comparing the key excerpts of the other books. Excerpts can be displayed by subject, and links are provided to move from one subject to another.

Digital content excerpt identification

In some implementations, a device displays a user interface that provides supplemental information in connection with a digital work. For example, the supplemental information may include a listing of objects identified in the digital work. Further, a visual representation may be displayed with each listed object. The visual representation for each listed object may provide a representation of at least one location of at least one occurrence of the object in the digital work. The objects may be displayed according to a supplemental information view, a page view, a chapter view, a book view, a series view, a library view, or the like. Additionally, one or more object buttons may be displayed concurrently with the listing of objects. The object buttons may correspond to the types of objects displayed, and may be selected to limit the displayed objects to a particular type.

Providing supplemental information for a digital work in a user interface

In some implementations, a device displays supplemental information in connection with a digital work. The supplemental information may include a visual representation that represents one or more occurrences of an object in the digital work. The visual representation may include an area representative of an expanse of the digital work. At least one marking is located in the area in correlation to a location of an occurrence of the object in the digital work. In some examples, the visual representation may include a plurality of markings representing multiple occurrences of the object in the digital work, with a first or leftmost marking positioned in the area in proportion to a first occurrence of the object in the digital work. A second or rightmost marking may be positioned in the area in proportion to a final occurrence of the object in the digital work.

Visual representation of supplemental information for a digital work

In some implementations, text is extracted from a digital work and proper nouns are identified in the text to generate a list of names. The list of names may be sorted so that names containing more information are positioned toward the beginning of the list. The list may be traversed to cluster names and alternate names into name sets that correspond to particular entities in the digital work. Non-unique names that appear in more than one name set may be disambiguated based on proximity to unique names in the same name sets to determine which occurrences of the non-unique names belong with which name sets. Furthermore, a representative name may be selected from among multiple names in a name set for use in representing an entity or object corresponding to the name set. In some examples, the representative name may be selected based on a fullness of the name.

Identifying entities in a digital work

In some implementations, text is extracted from a digital work and a plurality of noun phrases are identified. The noun phrases are checked against a network accessible resource, such as an online encyclopedia, that includes a plurality of interlinked article entries. The noun phrases that have corresponding entries in the network accessible resource are included in a set of candidate topics. The candidate topics are ranked based, at least in part, on the links to and from each of the entries corresponding to the candidate topics. Candidate topics below a ranking threshold are removed from the set of candidate topics. Further, term frequency information for each candidate topic in relation to the digital work is compared against term frequency information for the candidate topic in a large corpus of textual works to remove candidate topics within a frequency difference threshold.

Identifying topics in a digital work

In some implementations, a digital work may include a plurality of objects that may be selected to view supplemental information. A supplemental information user interface may include a listing of objects from the digital work. For instance, the listing may include a selected object appearing at an identified location in the digital work. The user interface may further present a visual representation displayed with each object that provides an indication of at least one location of at least one occurrence of the corresponding object in the digital work. In some examples, a user may navigate between a supplemental information view user interface, a page view user interface, a chapter view user interface, a book view user interface, a series view user interface, and/or a library view user interface to view occurrences of a particular object in the digital work or other digital works.

Navigating supplemental information for a digital work

In some implementations, one or more words from a digital work are used to generate a game to be displayed on an electronic device. For example, the electronic device may include a library of one or more digital works. A word or knowledge game may be dynamically generated based on objects, such as characters, topics, places, organizations, things, etc., identified in at least one digital work in the library. As one example, a crossword puzzle may be created to include words and clues based at least in part on the objects identified in at least one digital work and supplemental information associated with the objects. The clues for the crossword puzzle may be generated automatically based, at least in part, on a desired level of difficulty. Further, in some cases, the game may be generated from words drawn from multiple digital works in the library.

Generating a game related to a digital work

In some implementations, a digital work provider provides a digital work and supplemental information related to the digital work for delivery to an electronic device. For example, the digital work provider may parse a digital work to identify objects in the digital work. The digital work provider may generate supplemental information for the digital work based on the objects. For example, the supplemental information may include an index identifying locations of occurrences of the objects identified in the digital work. The supplemental information may further include prestored content related to one or more of the objects. For instance, the digital work provider may obtain the prestored content from one or more authoritative network resources. The electronic device may display the supplemental information in response to a user selection of an object in the digital work during display of the digital work.

Providing supplemental information for a digital work

Display screen having a graphical user interface for providing supplemental information of a digital work

This disclosure describes a platform for better connecting authors and retailers that offer works of the authors for acquisition by a community of users. This platform includes multiple tools that allow the authors to provide content to the community of users through the retailer or through another entity. In addition, this platform provides tools that authors may utilize for marketing their works, for tracking acquisition (e.g., sales) of their works, for connecting with other authors, or for a multitude of other purposes.

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Mercer Island, WA, United States of America

Adam J Iser