US Patent 10042880 Automated identification of start-of-reading location for ebooks

A machine-learning system analyzes electronic books to determine a “start-of-reading location” (SRL) in each book. Based on this location, when an electronic book is opened on a reading device for the first time, the book can be opened to where a reader is likely to want to start reading, automatically skipping past introductory pages. Books are divided into logical blocks (e.g., title page, forward, chapters, etc.), and a title portion and a body-text portion is identified in each block. A title classifier attempts to determine whether or not a block should be marked as the SRL. If the score from the title classifier is indefinite, a body-text classifier is used.