Judging a Book by Its Contents: “Name that famous book from just these phrases: ‘pagan harpooneers,’ ‘stricken whale,’ ‘ivory leg.’ Or how about this one: ‘old sport.’

Yes, it’s Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, respectively, but the words aren’t just a game. They are Statistically Improbable Phrases, the result of a new Amazon.com feature that compares the text of hundreds of thousands of books to reveal an author’s signature constructions.

…(A commentator) thinks Amazon is currently just experimenting, but it will soon find intriguing ways, such as using authoritative texts to answer user questions, to wring profit out of what may well be the largest collection of electronic books in the world.

Bill Carr, Amazon’s executive vice president of digital media, confirms that this is a serious attempt to sell more books. ” (Wired)