Trajectory is an American technology company that focuses on the global book

publishing Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

market. It was founded by Jim Bryant in 2011 and is headquartered in

Marblehead, Massachusetts Marblehead is a coastal New England town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, along the North Shore (Massachusetts), North Shore. Its population was 20,441 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. The town lies on a small peninsu ...

. The company is known for the development of a series of deep learning algorithms that are used to analyze and recommend books.

History

Since its founding in 2011 by Jim Bryant has established relationships with over 300 eBook distributors worldwide. In 2013, the company acquired the assets of startup Small Demons, which gave them access to the

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...

’ e-book library for analysis and data extraction. Trajectory went on to establish other partnerships with major publishers, growing its algorithms’ ability for book recommendation. In 2014, the company invented a standardized way to compare and contrast the flow of sentiment through works of fiction. In January 2015, Trajectory announced that it had invented a method to generate book recommendations based on the content of the book. It is believed to be the first company to successfully demonstrate this. The company is also noted for its penetration in the Chinese e-book distribution market, where most notably it formed a pact with Tencent Literature in March 2015 to distribute over 200,000 Chinese titles in North and South American distribution channels and English titles across the Chinese company's customer base of 820 million active users. Also in the spring, Trajectory announced agreements with Chinese distributors

Xiaomi Xiaomi (; ) is a Chinese multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Beijing, China. It is best known for consumer electronics software electric vehicles. It is the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the worl ...

and

Dangdang E-commerce China Dangdang Inc. (), known as Dangdang, is a Chinese electronic commerce company, founded by Peggy Yu and Li Guoqing in 1999. It is headquartered in Beijing and its main competitors are Amazon.cn (or Amazon China, formerly Joyo.com) ...

. In 2015, Trajectory announced agreements with Peoples Education Press, Zhejiang, Anhui,

Diamond Comic Distributors Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. (often called Diamond Comics, DCD, or casually Diamond) is an American comic book distributor serving retailers in North America and worldwide. It transports comic books and graphic novels, as well as other popu ...

, Gardners, the Association of American University Presses and others. In September of the same year, the company won the

Book Industry Study Group The Book Industry Study Group, Inc. (BISG) is an American trade association for policy, technical standards and research related to books and similar products. The mission of BISG is to simplify logistics for publishers, manufacturers, suppliers ...

's Industry Innovation Award for their re-imagination of and unique approach to the industry.

Customers

Trajectory works within both the publishing and distributing sectors of the e-book market and has announced relationships with a broad range of major participants in the global book supply chain.

Publishers

Among its clients, Trajectory's publisher partners include including, Macmillan, Abrams,

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

, Peoples Education Press, Anhui, Zhejiang.

Distributors

Trajectory's distributor partners include: Tencent Literature,

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across the United States. Barnes & Noble operates mainly through its B ...

, Kobo, and over 300 other partners.

Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning

In order to improve

discoverability Discoverability is the degree to which something, especially a piece of content or information, can be found in a search of a file, database, or other information system. Discoverability is a concern in library and information science, many aspects ...

for books in publishing and distribution channels, Trajectory uses

Natural Language Processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

(NLP) and implements “Deep Learning” techniques that were the first of their kind to recommend books based on proprietary algorithms. German Keywords

These algorithms parse the text of the book and categorize data based on certain features like sentiment, parts of speech, genre, and keywords, and match it to the previously processed books in their database to generate suggestions. This content analysis contrasts current recommendation methods used by major companies like

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

that are powered by sales data and user reports. As the Natural Language Processing Engine parses more and more books in English, Chinese, Spanish, and German, the algorithms recommending capabilities improve transliterally.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Book selling websites Companies based in Marblehead, Massachusetts Technology companies established in 2011 Ebook sources Ebook suppliers Electronic publishing Internet properties established in 2011 Online retailers of the United States Publishing companies established in 2011 Self-publishing companies American companies established in 2011 Retail companies established in 2011