BNC Blog

Da PubFight is on!

September 2nd, 2010 by Noah Genner

I’ll admit it I’ve never won PubFight, I’m last in my fantasy baseball pool and I didn’t win my hockey pool either, but hope springs eternal. Tis a new season and all past out-of-stock-transgressions are forgotten. My new mantra this year…’Keep’em in stock’. Losing sales because I don’t have the book on the ’shelf’ is just unacceptable, and in the fantasyland of PubFight I don’t even have to worry about shipping, unpacking, re-labelling, etc… Just print’em and let them fly off the shelves, but for some reason I still can’t do that? The heat of the fall/Christmas book rush? I dunno…it should be easy. It isn’t, and once again in PubFight I only have to manage 10 titles.

All that to say that this year we have over 100 Canadian Publishing/Book Professionals actively playing a fantasy publishing game. For many of them this ‘game’ mimics their real life jobs, but still they come. Perhaps it is the fun of managing someone else’s titles? Maybe it is the free chips and stellar awards they get at the end of the season? Or, and this might be my hope, they love books, love games and love the book supply-chain? Yes, I said ‘love’ and ’supply-chain’ together. If nothing else I hope they take away an appreciation of just how hard it is to keep the wheels of industry/publishing rolling. And above all else…I hope everyone has some fun.

I know that I’m already being Mockingjay‘ed by the first place team.

Thanks for playing and if you are a SalesData subscriber and want to play next year give us a shout.

Share and Enjoy:

Posted in PubFight | 1 Comment »

How Ladies Find Books: Tips for Online Book Matchmaking

September 2nd, 2010 by Samantha Francis

We at BookNet Canada talk a lot about metadata, sometimes ad nauseam. Accurate and thorough metadata is the best way for consumers to find out about a publisher’s book online. Some people think, “Well, that’s great for online. But we know that a lot of books are still sold in brick-and-mortar stores.” True, but that doesn’t get you off the hook, especially with women. Women looking for their next favourite book will find their perfect match online.

As Paco Underhill tells us in What Women Want , research shows that women tend to be overwhelmed by the vast amount of choice some retail stores now offer. This is not unique to books and it is certainly not limited to women. Browsing in stores has become less pleasurable—and less productive—as we are given more and more options. (However, not having a book in stock is a sale killer. You just can’t win.) This is driving consumers online for research purposes. They look things up online to make their trip to the store less intimidating or less disorienting.

So even if a woman buys her books in a store, you should try to catch her online. This goes not only for the publisher, but for the bookstore too. Booksellers should not miss the opportunity to speak to their customers online. It need not be strictly on a store website, although that’s a good place to start. Use social media and email newsletters.

Recommendation lists are also helpful (duh). Make sure to change them up and personalize and specialize them, if you can. Updating lists encourages readers to return to your website for new ideas, and focusing your recommendation lists gives your suggestions credibility.

An interesting tip for recommending something specifically to women: Women trust women’s recommendations a lot more than men’s. (I guess they’re just sexist that way.) Do with that what you will, but it’s good to know when planning your communication strategy.

Find the previous post on the female book-buying market here .

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: Bookselling, Paco Underhill, What Women Want, women
Posted in Bookselling, Online Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

How does your garden grow?

September 1st, 2010 by Tim Middleton

When I read the word perennial I immediately think about gardening. Doesn’t everyone? Well, maybe Aldous Huxley didn’t when he wrote The Perennial Philosophy but most people think gardening. I don’t know a lot about gardening and I know less about perennial philosophy, but I do know perennials vs. annuals. Perennials come up year after year and so involve less labour and less investment. Annuals appear annually, are labour intensive and cost you money each year.

Some may say I also don’t know much about bookselling having been out of the trenches of a bookstore for far too long, however I do spend most of my working hours thinking about bookselling, spend most of my free shopping time in bookstores and follow a number of booksellers on Facebook and Twitter. Just the other day I saw this tweet from the University of British Columbia bookstore:

Perennial

I know that as a bookseller in a bookstore I was closed-minded, closed-minded in the way that a lot of booksellers are, i.e. “I know all there is to know about bestsellers”. This is what I now consider a culture problem in bookstores, the idea that you can’t gain anything from the oh so crude world of numbers and that your own memory is sufficient when it comes to knowing the backlist of every publisher and what constitutes a bestseller. It is a Paul Bunyan kind of story.

Trying to find the next Twilight or Girl With the Dragon Tattoo takes a lot of labour and investment. These books are the annuals of the book world, some bloom some don’t and they don’t return next year, (but you return them). The perennials are what will give you some stability in your otherwise chaotic world and also, obviously, the thing that keeps readers coming back year after year.

It is no mean feat that BookNet and the Canadian book industry now has enough historical data to begin mapping the perennials of the book world. As a seasoned bookseller there may not be that many surprises in our report although there will be some. But what about the unseasoned bookseller, the new bookseller, the new bookstore? What about those booksellers that need to know what flowers are going to be reliable and take less effort, require less investment and in fact give you some kind of economic stability if there is such a thing in book selling these days? The is a report to share with new and current staff and to address one of the perennial problems of bookselling - the loss of experienced people who have a lot of knowledge about what sells.

There is another side to this report that I am equally interested in. But that is for another blog post. See you next week.

If you are a BNC SalesData subscriber check out the BNC Perennial Bestseller research study by logging into salesdata.ca.

Share and Enjoy:

Posted in Bookselling, General BookNet | No Comments »

Do Sales Make an Author Overrated?

August 26th, 2010 by Samantha Francis

On Tuesday, Alex Good and Steven W. Beattie gave another good stir to the CanLit pot by listing who, in their opinion, are the ten most overrated fiction writers in Canada. Now, I’m not going to take sides; BookNet Canada officially loves all books equally. But working for BNC, whose SalesData service tracks approximately 75% of the Canadian book market, does make you wonder about “real value” in publishing.

As Good and Beattie readily admit, calling an author overrated is at least partially a subjective judgment. But I have to wonder if sales figures played a larger role in their listings than they’d like to admit.

It would be a mistake to classify an author as overrated simply because they are a household name or a bestseller. We all know that sales do not correlate to literary reputation. But when sales are involved, it becomes difficult to be subjective at all. Authors who sell do so because people want to read them, and if people want to read them then they’re delivering something valuable. Even if it’s not the grandest literary accomplishment, a successful book deserves some level of respect, doesn’t it? After all, publishing is about communication, not just self-expression. When a book speaks to an audience it is an accomplished book, is it not?

Of course, Good and Beattie aren’t discussing authors is general; their focus is literary fiction and stylistic merit. But that’s not all there is, and being a bestseller remains something to be proud of. I’ll let The Afterword moderate the debate about whether Joseph Boyden is untalented and Bill Gaston is the real literary genius. To my taste, both are wonderful writers.

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: Afterword, Alex Good, CanLit, Steven W. Beattie
Posted in Book Data and Analysis, General BookNet | 1 Comment »

Vending Machine Dreams

August 25th, 2010 by Tim Middleton

Something tells me that humans are sentimental beings or perhaps it is that when there is a disruption we like to hang onto something we think is undisruptable. The problem is we don’t really know what is solid enough to hold onto. Is a vending machine solid enough? The reason I am thinking this right now is thanks to an article I saw on a 100 year old butcher shop adding a vending machine so that they can serve their customers 24/7.

My knee jerk reaction was to think “a vending machine is innovative?” Maybe in 1901 it was. But then I began to think about the number of times I’ve passed my local bookstore in the morning on the way to the train. I stare in the window and think “I would buy that right now”, but I can’t because the store is closed. I may go away and buy that book as an ebook when I get on the train, but what if there was a book vending machine at this store. What if they turned their window display into a vending machine. I would buy it on my way to the train. And if this view

“What we hear from our customers is a great deal of enthusiasm for price bundling, so you can read the physical book at home when you’re in bed at night and when you’re on the subway you can read the same book on your e-reader,” said Rachel Meier, general manager at Booksmith.
(read more)

is right then and I could buy a bundled ebook and paperback -well that would be the cat’s pajamas.

So surely I thought no one has ever tried selling books from a vending machine before, books are just too precious, right? And of course it has been tried and actually is still going on. Apparently Penguin had a vending machine in the 30’s called the Penguincubator and there are vending machines in France, Brazil, Japan, and of course Germany. So maybe this isn’t such a unique idea but the thing about those vending machines is that they aren’t connected to the internet like say a kiosk is, and they don’t seem to be connected to a local bookstore. It seems like maybe most of them are vendor managed or publisher specific. Now this is where the local bookstore good at curation can make this work.

What if instead of this:

novel idea

you saw something on the scale of this:
wedding vending
only you saw your shop window, pbooks, ebooks and bundles available to your customers who have an account with you that maybe they set up online or while in your store. They have a membership card from your store and it is all connected to your web presence anyway. Think, “what would Apple do”.

Granted it was in a trend watchers newsletter that I read about the butcher shop. Trends by definition are trendy -they come and go. But the trend is the vending machine not buying books. People want to buy books and will in the most convenient way and impulsively if you are there for them. So why not turn the vending machine into an ebook/pbook/kiosk/24/7service bookstore branded machine? I would shop at your store even when you were at home sleeping.

Now someone just has to build one of these things. It can’t be that hard!

Share and Enjoy:

Posted in Bookselling, General BookNet, eBooks | 2 Comments »

Something for the Ladies

August 19th, 2010 by Samantha Francis

We in book publishing know that women make up a large majority of our market, but what do we do to cater to them? There are many ways for a publisher or bookseller to keep women in mind, but to cover them all today would be excessively long. You’re all busy people, I know. So I’ll focus specifically on packaging in this blog post.

When contemplating a cover design, keep in mind that women tend to prefer colours and soft shapes. This is clearly old news considering how colourful and ornate many covers already are. But beware of prioritizing prettiness. Paco Underhill in his new book, What Women Want: The Global Market Turns Female Friendly, reminds us of two things that are especially relevant to book cover design:

Women want control, and in many buying situations this means they want information. While a cover’s aesthetic may be eye catching, what will sway your female reader to pick up your book is the information on the jacket.

The other thing to keep in mind is that often women are much more comfortable with masculinity than men are comfortable with femininity. In other words, making a book look particularly pretty is not essential to reach women—and it may deter male readers from making the book their next subway read. This is a relief when it comes to figuring out how to package a book for a broad audience, but it isn’t to say that a cover for female readers shouldn’t reflect their tastes.

If Underhill is right (and he seems to back up his advice with thorough market research so he probably is) packing more information onto the jacket of a general nonfiction book and brightening it up a bit stands to go a long way to engage women who might otherwise be uninterested, intimidated or turned off. And making your next novel cover a little less feminine won’t alienate your female readers, but it may attract more male readers.

And remember that women do their own shopping, but they also buy for their family and friends. Just because women aren’t your target audience for a book does not mean they aren’t the primary purchasers. What are you telling the purchaser to let them know your book is ideal and appropriate for the person they’re shopping for? Something to think about.

Making books accessible = finding new readers

August 17th, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald

This entry is cross-posted at BookMadam.com .

Most of us have figured out that we should have frontlist titles available in print and digital formats, so that readers have a choice. But what about those people who aren’t your readers — yet — who want to be, but don’t have any options?

Accessible books are hard to find, especially front list books. This is more than simply audiobooks for the visually impaired, it’s about creating accessible digital content that’s just as easy to use as the print counterpart.

The DAISY Standard for Digital Talking Books makes navigating through audiobooks quick and easy. Just like you would tag an ebook, you can also tag audio content (chapters, headings, paragraphs, sentences) so that readers can fast forward, rewind, and jump back and forth between content. Sounds simple, but that navigation is surprisingly hard with a standard audiobook (if that audiobook is even available). Depending on the device, readers can also search for words and place bookmarks in the audio content.

More importantly, though, structuring the audio content means that it can be synchronized with text and graphics so that readers can listen to an audiobook while following along with the print or ebook. Imagine the potential for people who are learning to read or learning a new language!

EDItEUR and the DAISY Consortium have teamed up on the Enabling Technologies Framework , a three year project funded by WIPO . The goal of the project is to make it possible for publishers to easily create digital publications that are fully accessible to people who have print disabilities. Ideally, publishers will be able to create one product that meets the needs of both mainstream readers and those with print disabilities.

Currently, feedback is being collected through an international publishing survey focused on production processes and digital workflow. Everyone is invited to participate, so make sure your voice is heard.

The Enabling Technologies Framework will also be hosting a forum during the Frankfurt Bookfair as a way to introduce the accessibility and publishing communities to each other and, hopefully, figure out how we can work together.

This is Meghan MacDonal’s first post as a Book Madam Associate ! Sometimes — like this time — you’ll find her cross-posting between the two, but for the most part she’ll be writing different content for each blog. Enjoy!

Share and Enjoy:

Posted in Future of the Book, Standards, eBooks | No Comments »

BNC 101: ISTCs

August 12th, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald

The International Standard Text Code (ISTC) is a numbering system developed to enable the unique identification of textual works. — istc-international.org

An ISTC is a new way of linking different formats of the same book. Unlike an ISBN, it is tied to the book and only the book, not the publisher. A simple example is using an ISTC to link the hardcover, trade paper, mass market, and epub versions of a title. Even though each format would have a different ISBN, they would share a single ISTC.

Why is it important? Because it helps you manage your catalogues and it improves online discoverability for booksellers, consumers, librarians, media, etc. To use BNC CataList, our online catalogue service, as an example, we’re currently limited to relying on ONIX fields (which are often incomplete) or on publishers manually entering information to link a single title to all its other formats. If ISTCs were used throughout the industry, we would be able to automatically link all formats together. So if you were to look up hardcover A, the ISTC would automatically enable CataList to show you that it has the same content as trade paper A, mass market A, and epub A.

This becomes even more important if the title of the text changes, but the text itself remains the same. For example, Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes in Canada and Someone Knows My Name in the United States. Same content, but different titles in the countries. The standard way to link these two titles would be to use an ISTC.

What’s Happening

ISTC became an official ISO standard (21047) in March 2009.
The International ISTC Agency is currently partnering with Bowker and Nielsen to run a pilot program with a group of publishers, authors, and rights holders.
ISTC Search beta site is up and running.

What about Canada?

There currently isn’t very much happening in Canada with ISTCs. Interested? Publishers can always take the lead to make something happen. Contact us if you have any questions.

Links

ISTC International

ISTC Pilot Program

BISAC Identification Committee presentation on ISTCs

ISTC Search - Beta

ONIX for ISTCs

ISO Standard 21047

ISTC Registration Agencies

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: ISTC
Posted in BNC 101, Standards | 4 Comments »

(Old) Spicing It Up

August 10th, 2010 by Samantha Francis

There is no doubt that this summer’s biggest heartthrob was the Old Spice Guy.

The commercials were hilarious. And they would have been enough. But then the geniuses behind Old Spice guy took it up a notch and blew us away with their response campaign, making short YouTube video responses to personal messages, including tweets. It floored everybody. Well done, Proctor & Gamble, well done.

And the results? Social Times tells us that “Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ campaign was the fastest growing interactive campaign in history.” The videos have been viewed an infinite amount of times and Old Spice’s social media followings have grown exponentially—but aside from all this “interaction,” the company can also boast real results: “the brand’s sales are also up 107%, making Old Spice the number one brand for men’s body wash.”

W+K, the agency on the job, knew that women make more than half of all body wash purchases and realized it was time to speak to them. Old Spice guy spoke directly to the women (”Hello, ladies.”) who were buying the flowery body wash for the family and suggested they might want to consider letting their man smell like a man—or better yet, like a towel-clad dreamboat.

There are some incredibly talented people behind this campaign, but the basic concept has been around for a while. What the Old Spice guy team did was follow the advice that social media experts have been trying to pound into our brains: Engaging with an audience is way better than just talking at them.

Now one thing is clear: Old Spice is no longer just for old guys. Obviously Old Spice guy #2 is too much to expect for book campaign, but there are some lessons to learn from that guy on a horse.

Social media does reach audiences so invest time and money in it, and recruit experienced talent. Reclusive authors and interns do not count as social media experts.
Virtual interaction can go a long way. If you can’t tour an author there’s still a lot possible other than review mailings, and maybe, just maybe, tours aren’t always the most effective tool for every book anyway.
Know your audience, really. With women doing the majority of the body wash purchasing, you can’t afford to exclude them in a campaign for men’s body wash. So if your book is going to be gifted to someone it’s important to create awareness with people who will buy that gift, not just the receiver of the gift. Then add your own version of the response campaign for the reader to add value.

SWAN DIVE! into the best marketing campaign of your life.

I’m on a horse.

Social Times piece by Megan O’Neill on the campaign’s success.

W+K’s case study video on the Old Spice Guy campaign.

Because the videos are always fun to watch, here is the Old Spice YouTube channel.

An informative piece on the campaign on Read Write Web by Marshall Kirkpatrick.

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: book publishing, marketing campaign, Old Spice, Social Media
Posted in Case Studies, General BookNet, Online Marketing | 2 Comments »

Anthologize: Making Web-First Workflow Even Easier for Publishers

August 5th, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald

Anthologize is a free, open-source, plugin that transforms WordPress 3.0 into a platform for publishing electronic texts. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, import feeds from external sites, or create new content directly within Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a single volume for export in several formats, including—in this release—PDF, ePUB, TEI. — Anthologize

Anthologize grew out of One Week | One Tool — yes, one week — a project of the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University.

This is my favourite type of project: pulling together a small group of people with diverse backgrounds who end up making something amazing. I think there’s something in the small team/fast pace combination that leads to magic… and really useful products.

So, what’s all the fuss about? This is the extra step that’s been needed to make it extremely easy for any publisher to implement web-first workflow : all you need is WordPress and a plugin.

Now, you can create all of your chunks of content (chapters, excerpts, etc.) in WordPress, then use Anthologize in the WordPress admin side to create new projects that can pull from any content you have in WordPress, external feeds, or content you create in Anthologize itself. That means you can easily create multiple formats from a single source of information. Current export options include: PDF, ePUB, and TEI (an XML format).

To summarize: WordPress to PDF, ePUB, and TEI with the click of a button.

But, we still make paper books, right? Right. So, what if someone added a script that exports a file that can be placed into InDesign for print production? That’s where SFU’s Start With the Web /Book of MPub project comes in: John Maxwell , Kathleen Fraser , and I are all testing Anthologize right now and will be adding our script — the one that turns web content into ICML (which gets placed into InDesign) — as soon as possible. Then, Anthologize will be able to instantly create the files publishers are currently concerned about (InDesign and ePUB) from a single source.

Testing Anthologize

I started some basic testing of Anthologize and I’m really impressed so far. Here’s how it works:

All your WordPress posts will be pulled into the Items panel. Each Part (ex. Chapter 1 below) will become an element in your epub table of contents. Create as many new parts as you need, then drag and drop your posts into the part you want to find them in. Click Export Project.

Fill in this bit of metadata (hint to Anthologize: there should be an ISBN here). Click Next.

Choose your export options — and that’s it!

My results

I exported an epub file…

Then cracked it open and pulled out the main_content.html file…

Converted it to ICML (InCopy Markup Language which imports into InDesign) for print production…

And placed it into InDesign.

The whole process took about 10 minutes. Seriously.

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: Anthologize, epub, XML Workflow
Posted in Business Models, How To, Workflow, eBooks | 5 Comments »

The pages turn just like…an ebook

July 29th, 2010 by Chelsea Theriault

The first time I saw a digital page-turn simulation, I thought, “That’s neat.” The first time I actually tried reading an ebook that way, I thought, “That’s annoying.” While an e-ink device’s screen refreshes to get to the next page, many desktop platforms, apps, and LED devices come with multiple options for getting from page A to page B. For example, my Kobo iPhone app has five: scroll, fade, slide, curl, and flip. Fade is the winner; it’s a gentle but speedy refresh. Scroll always seems to make me skim over parts (probably the phone’s uber-responsive touch screen combined with a habit born from extended Internet surfing), and the remaining options that mimic page turns feel clunky to me. They’re actually quite fast and elegant, but something about those movements doesn’t feel right as I’m reading.

Whether or not to imitate a paper reading experience on a digital platform is a topic that seems to polarize people. It can be a useful gimmick to help those new to e-reading bridge the gap between print and digital, but will we look back on the faux-bookshelf browsers and fluttering digital pages in five years and laugh?

Here’s an extreme case of “my-ebook-should-act-exactly-like-a-paper-book” silliness (from Ars Technica):

Three iPad users claim that because the iPad will shut itself off after remaining in direct sunlight for long enough, it fails to meet the promises Apple made about using the iPad as an e-book reader. The group has filed a federal class-action lawsuit in the Northern California district to “redress and end this pattern of unlawful conduct.” [...] The plaintiffs seem to take particular issue with Apple claiming that “reading on the iPad is just like reading a book.”

I find this so baffling that I don’t really know how to respond. But Chris Walters from The Consumerist deserves a big high-five for this retort:

If the plaintiffs win, I think Apple should also be forced to install a wind sensor so that pages flip automatically when you’re outdoors in a strong breeze. Then the company could sell an “iPadWeight” wireless accessory ($69) that you would have to put on top of the screen to “hold down” the pages. A wireless “iMark” ($29) that would function as a bookmark wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

I’m looking forward to how e-reading interfaces develop, but hopefully they get over the growing pains and creepy nostalgia for how “real books” work (anyone playing the ebook drinking game, that one’s for you). The benefits of ebooks: they’re portable, immediate, searchable (should be, anyway), and relatively inexpensive. It doesn’t really make sense to display them on an imitation shelf, especially when the UI possibilities are so much greater.

Why not experiment with cover flow, colour coordination, a tag cloud-esque jumble that groups related authors together, dimming titles you’ve read recently, and lighting up ones you’ve marked as “to read”? The possibilities are endless. Bottom line: ereading software shouldn’t limit reading and browsing by pretending ebooks are made out of paper. Give us the option to explore text and ebook catalogues in ways that take advantage of the device, or platform, at hand.

“Class action lawsuit filed over ‘overheating’ iPads” on Ars Technica

The Consumerist’s response

Bookavore’s ebook article drinking game

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: ebook
Posted in E-Readers, Future of the Book, eBooks | No Comments »

The Fight Over Formats: All or Nothing

July 28th, 2010 by Samantha Francis

Random House and the Jackal are going at it and I can’t blame them. They are fighting over some very valuable territory. We’ve all read lots about trying to claim backlist ebook rights, about the conflict of interest in becoming an agent-publisher, about single-channel exclusives being a bad idea, blah, blah, blah. Yes, neither side is squeaky clean and maybe neither was acting like the sharpest knife in the drawer at different points in time, but this turf war has raised a bigger problem:

Does it make sense to separate ebook rights from print rights?

It doesn’t—at least not if you’re the one who only has print. Here’s why:

Michael Shatzkin wrote a very long and very intelligent blog post about the abovementioned skirmish on Sunday. In it, he nodded to Evan Schnittman for pointing out that “Ebooks don’t exist in a vacuum” and “can’t be evaluated with stand-alone economics” and then quoted John Schline of Penguin who says “you don’t do a P&L on a format; you do a P&L on a title.”

The ebook-in-a-vaccuum assumption, which is so popular these days, is dead wrong. As Andrew Franklin says, “e-books are not a separate market from physical books. … Some would say they are parasitical on them. The editorial work, design, marketing and selling are all done for physical books, and e-books sell on their back.” This is probably the best way to frame the House versus Jackal dustup (running out of adjectives for fight here…).

By only grabbing ebooks rights, an ebook publisher is profiting from someone else’s investment—and this is true for frontlist and backlist titles. (Just because something has earned out does not mean the current profit isn’t deserved. The profit on backlist titles that have earned out is a result of the initial investment. In other words, if a title is successful it is at least partially due to having been published at all.) Print publishers invest a lot in creating the book’s files from which print or electronic book versions are made. Print publishers also spend considerable resources marketing and publicizing the book. Let’s not forget that this investment is also a risk; it’s a show of faith in the book and the author.

Until ebook-only publishers start sharing those substantial publishing costs, you could, technically, call them parasitic. They benefit from the quality of the edit, proofread, design, etc., and then profit from the advertising, marketing campaigns, media coverage, and resulting popularity—all paid for by the print publisher.

What does this imply about authors who want to work with a print publisher and self-publish the ebook format themselves? It does seem hard to have it both ways and claim the moral high ground. If an author sees a benefit to having a publisher they should recognize the publisher’s contribution to the entire life of a title, not ignoring its impact on one format. (To be clear, I’m not claiming the author doesn’t invest a lot in the book as well, but the proper time to address this is during advance and royalty negotiations, and yes this includes generous backlist ebook royalties.)

So to refute all the wild accusations that publishing companies are being evil, I point out that publishers have very legitimate reasons for insisting on buying all the rights to a book. They also have a legitimate complaint if a new format of a title they have worked on gets taken away. Calling them greedy is unfair (depending on the ebook royalty they offer, of course). As ebooks become increasingly popular, it is just bad business for a publishing company to invest the same amount it used to spend on publishing all formats into a smaller piece of the pie. In other words, would you want to be the sole investor in a project you don’t completely own, especially when your investment will result in beefing up someone else’s profit margin? No, you wouldn’t. It’s all or nothing.

Michael Shatzkin’s piece on the debacle.

Evan Schnittman’s related post on ebook royalties.

Andrew Franklin’s editorial on the kerfuffle.

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: Andrew Wylie, ebook, publishing, self-publishing
Posted in eBooks | No Comments »

Web-First Workflow: Confluence Proof-of-Concept

July 26th, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald

Or, practicing what we preach.

Back in May, Noah blogged about the potential for Confluence by Atlassian to work as a web-first xml workflow solution. His post put Confluence up alongside WordPress from SFU’s Book of MPub (full disclosure: I worked with John Maxwell in 2009 on Start With the Web and still do some related work today) as a contender. Really, any CMS/wiki can work, it’s just a matter of how well it works and whether it works for you.

So, why Confluence?

We already use it and we like it. We have spaces for all of our projects and either upload attachments or create pages (the goal is to get away from uploading attachments whenever possible). At this point, we don’t want to start from scratch.

My Mission

To figure out if Confluence will serve BNC’s web-first production needs (tech documentation, educational materials, etc.), which include:

ease of use
WYSIWYG editor
version control
commenting
PDF export (we don’t have a designer on staff, so we need an easy export that anyone in the office can use)
customizable stylesheets

That’s it for now, but I will be testing the XML and HTML exports in the future.

Ease of Use

We already use it and like it, so that gets a check. Any problems we have with Confluence are based on our own organization of the content and not on Confluence itself. Bonus points for how easy it is to move child pages around to re-organize content.

WYSIWYG Editor

Check.

And Wiki mark-up.

Version Control

Check. At this point it’s at the page level, but we think it can be more granular — I just haven’t had time to figure out how.

Commenting

Check

PDF Export

So easy. Select pages you want to export from the tree structure, click export, and you have yourself a PDF.

Things I’d like to see: Currently, you can only export from one space at a time. We have all of our content divided into spaces by project, but sometimes we’ll need to pull in a page from a different space…but can’t unless we duplicate the content or temporarily move it over. So, I’d like to be able to select from multiple spaces when exporting.

Customizable Stylesheets

Huge win. You can choose to use the generic stylesheet but customize a header, footer, and title page, or you can dive in and edit the CSS yourself like this:

Things I’d like to see: Multiple stylesheets that apply to all spaces. Currently, it’s one stylesheet per space, but I’d like to be able to select from options when I export.

The Result

Increase Sales & Lower Costs with Better Metadata [pdf] was completely written in Confluence and exported as a PDF with a custom stylesheet applied. The title page was created separately, but everything else comes from Confluence. We needed something quick and easy so that anyone in the office can create and export tech documentation, or one-offs when we get requests for information from publishers — and Confluence works for us.

Up Next

Testing XML and HTML exports.

Links

Confluence by Atlassian

Noah’s Confluence as a Web Based Publishing System

The Book of MPub

XML Production: Start With the Web

Share and Enjoy:

Posted in Business Models, Case Studies | 2 Comments »

SalesData Tip #11: From Tips to How-To’s—A Cornucopia of Help Options

July 22nd, 2010 by jfry

As we approach the fall, the industry’s busiest season, we thought it worthwhile to revisit the help options available on BNC SalesData. There’s nothing worse than being in a hurry and not knowing where to go for help. We, at BookNet Canada, are looking out for you and have provided you many, many ways to satisfy your hunger for help.

Sometimes while on the BNC SalesData site, you can’t remember that next step in the search you’re building or you’re unsure the site is even capable of doing what you want or need it to do to get ready. And you’re hurried; you have to rush for that sales meeting or to complete that report on deadline. In other words, if you are hungry for more knowledge but aren’t sure where to turn, there are a few avenues you can walk down to find the help that you need.

1. Tool Tips—Amuse-bouche

You may have noticed the little ? icon (image). It can be found on the home page, on the forms you use to build your search query, and on the results pages where you view your data. These “Tool Tips,” as we like to call them, are there to provide immediate help, on the spot, when you need it. They provide a little more information about how to use the box on the form or how to work with the tabular results on the screen without having to open up the whole Help Manual. They are meant to be there for when you need a little assistance. We’ll call them the amuse-bouche of the SalesData world. A helpful snack just when your resolve starts to flag.

Here is an example of a tool tip for the Simple Search box that is available on most pages on the site.

Simply click the ? to open the tip

tooltip icon

Then click the ? icon again to close it.

tooltip icon

2. Help Manual—Ordering From the Menu

If you are hungry for more, the Help Manual is the entire menu. Available on every page through the top navigation, this user manual is there to answer just about every question you may have about the site.

To view the manual click the link, and it will display either on the screen or in a new window depending on the browser you are using.

Help link in the top navigation bar

Whether it is about functionality, like what reports are available and how to create them, or what data is found in a results table and what it means, the Help Manual is there to feed you the full meal.

It starts off with some appetizers such as the Retail Contributors list and the Binding Code list.

First view of the manual

Then we move onto the entrées. Each part of the application is described and broken down by report type and other site functions, such as Saving and Emailing reports and viewing Early Preview Data. Each section has tutorials that break the site down by section into a 5-15 minute videos. All you need are headphones and a few minutes to find out what each section can do and how to use it.

First view of the manual

3. Contact Us—Dessert

The Contact Us is the after dinner dessert and/or digestif that offers a little more personal service than the Tool Tips or the Manual can. If you click Contact Us in the top menu available on all pages, you will see a form on screen into which you can enter the details of your inquiry and submit. This form and its details goes directly to a team of people, one of whom will reply to you quickly.

4. Training and Other Assistance—The Buffet Dinner

For those with an insatiable appetite for BNC SalesData detail, we offer a few training options where you can get all you can eat:

A) Webinars/In-House Training: A few times a year we offer webinars to subscribers via the web and voice-over IP (VOIP). The next one of these is offered on August 10 at 2pm. If you are interested in attending, please go to the Event Brite link listed in this week’s eNews. These are quick and convenient. We also will come to you in person or via the Web on a firm-by-firm request basis. To make such a request, please get in touch with us at salesdata@booknetcanada.ca.

B) Live Chat:You may have noticed that there is a little red link in the top navigation bar. This is where you can click to chat with us in real time about what you want to do in the site. We have operators standing by most days from 9-5. If not, then the link will read as Offline. One of the other help options may have to serve in the meantime until we are back up in person.

C) Call Us: If you are working on the site and you have no idea how to get the information that you need for your report/sales meeting/etc, please don’t hesitate to call us. We will be happy to walk you through your process and try to help if what you want or need is not obviously available through the simple reporting tools in the site.

D) Custom Reporting: When all those tools do not fit the bill, we do entertain formal requests for custom reporting. These requests do have a fee attached to them and can be discussed on a case-by-case basis depending on the scope and size of the request.

What’s next for Help? We are planning a few improvements to the existing Help that we provide on the site. It is too early to talk specifics but I am happy to say more help is on the way. Watch this space and other BookNet Canada communication channels for news when these will be available to you on the site.

As Sid the Sloth says, Mangia, Mangia!

Share and Enjoy:

Posted in SalesData Tips | No Comments »

BNC 101: BISAC Classification

July 21st, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald

What are BISAC codes? How should you use them? Where are they used?

Book Industry Standards and Communications (BISAC) Classification Schemes are used to communicate subject information about a book. This information gets communicated through your ONIX file and is used to help identify where the book should be shelved in a physical store and how it can be found via search or browse in an online store, catalogue or other discovery platform.

BISAC Classification Schemes come in three forms: BISAC Subject Headings, BISAC Merchandising Themes, and BISAC Regional Themes. This post will focus on Subject Headings and Regional Themes.

BISAC Subject Headings

BISAC Subject Headings are the North American standard for describing subject information for your books. Each heading is actually made up of a code and a heading. The code is what is included in the ONIX file and is computer-readable, while the heading is the human-readable version of that code.

Each code is 9-characters long and is made up of 3 letters followed by 6 numbers.

Each heading is broken up into a minimum of 2 and maximum of 4 levels, getting more and more specific as you add levels.

Tip

Always make your codes as specific as possible. Using a general code means that your book will only be found when a reader browses in that general category. Specific codes, on the other hand, will be found in both the specific and general browse results—making it easier for readers to find your books.

Example

FIC000000 FICTION / General
FIC009020 FICTION / Fantasy / Epic

If you have a book that is an epic fantasy fiction, it should be classified as FIC009020 FICTION / Fantasy / Epic. (Side note: this is my favourite BISAC Subject Heading. I like to think it’s telling me the book is epic, instead of being an epic, like “Oh, dude, that fantasy fiction book is epic!”). If it’s only classified as general fiction (FIC000000 FICTION / General), readers who are looking specifically for epic fantasy fiction won’t find it in their browse results. The book will only appear if a reader is looking at browse results for fiction in general. So basically, if your reader knows what they want and you haven’t specified that your book is it, they won’t find it. If a reader were looking for an epic fantasy, why would she search general fiction?

BISAC Regional Themes

BISAC Regional Themes can be used when the subject of a book is tied to a specific region. That way, someone who is looking for all books about Vancouver Island can find all books about Vancouver Island.

These themes are numeric and are broken up into 7 levels:

Level 1 - Continents
Level 2 - Subcontinents
Level 3 - Countries
Level 4 - Subcountry regions
Level 5 - States, Provinces, Counties
Level 6 - City, Town, Area
Level 7 - Borough, Neighborhood, District

Example

4.0.2.0.2.2.0 is Vancouver Island, where:

Level 1 - Continents = North America (4)
Level 2 - Subcontinents = 0
Level 3 - Countries = Canada (2)
Level 4 - Subcountry regions = 0
Level 5 - States, Provinces, Counties = British Columbia (2)
Level 6 - City, Town, Area = Vancouver Island(2)
Level 7 - Borough, Neighborhood, District = 0

Once again, this information is becoming increasingly important as we discover books digitally—don’t get left behind!

Links

BISG Classification Schemes

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: BISAC, discoverability
Posted in BNC 101, Biblio, Bookselling, Data Exchange Tips, Education, Metadata, ONIX | 1 Comment »

Slush Pile Onslaught Gives Publishers a Branding Opportunity

July 20th, 2010 by Samantha Francis

There is a lot to be afraid of when one considers the online book marketplace. When I read Laura Miller’s apocalyptic piece on the inundation of self-published slush pile submissions a couple of weeks back it made me incredibly depressed. The thought of the marketplace being full of subpar, unedited manuscripts turned into ebooks or printed on demand, thus making it impossible for readers to differentiate the good book from the bad, was a devastating one. Why? Well, we call it the slush pile for a reason. Although there are a handful of stories about the hidden gem buried in the slush pile, the slush pile is, for the most part, full of awfulness. (Full disclosure: I am very familiar with the slush pile. We have met on several occasions. I have spent many hours, days, months, with the slush pile.) And Laura is right: it will suck the will to live right out of you.

And now, gradually, the stuff that sucks the life out of me is available for purchase. To be fair, it is usually available for very cheap. But I got paid to read the pile and will never pay it so that I can read it.

So when anyone can “publish,” doesn’t the marketplace become the slush pile?
How will a reader differentiate a good book from a bad one?

This is a legitimate concern, but I also believe it is the opportunity that many publishing houses, big and small, have been waiting for: a real chance to brand themselves to a receptive audience. Suddenly readers will look for a stamp of approval on books and that stamp can take the shape of having a publishing company attached to the title.

I think it’s fair to say that few readers make buying decisions based on imprint or publisher now, and few can probably name the publisher of a book they’ve just read, despite many publishers doing their best to brand themselves. But this could change when readers look for ways to narrow down their book search and filter out as many stinkers as possible. Perhaps this is a chance to breathe new life into imprints and turn them into key identifiers of good books.

Imprints currently have cachet within the industry, but few book buyers bother to read the label, so to speak. Some genres readers already have publishers whose colophons are trusted advisors. (Are these perhaps the same genres that were early adopters of self-publishing?) But this trend stands to spread when it becomes more and more difficult to single out good books.

Laura’s Miller piece in Salon on slush piles and their horribleness.

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: branding, online publishing, publishing, self-publishing, slush pile
Posted in Online Marketing | 2 Comments »

Ontario publishers collaborate for ebook promotion

July 14th, 2010 by Chelsea Theriault

No surprise here: publishers of all shapes and sizes are making ebooks. Still, making ebooks is one thing; selling them is another. While direct ebook sales may seem like a dream come true for any publisher with their eye on the margins (no discounts, distribution, or inventory), the reality is that partnerships are MUCH more beneficial than going it alone, especially on the expansive interweb. How would anyone know where to buy books online if stand-alone retailers didn’t exist and publishers only sold books from proprietary websites? How can companies with small marketing budgets afford to get the word out about their growing ebook catalogues? Exposure and discoverability is key. By partnering up, companies can pool their resources for the greater good of the collective, get noticed, and hopefully see some returns on their technology investments.

This is exactly what a group of academic, niche, general trade and children’s publishers within the Organization of Book Publishers of Ontario (OBPO) is doing to ensure that Canadian booksellers, libraries and readers discover their vast selection of e-books. The press release states:

With the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, the OBPO is launching a marketing campaign this summer with a series of national ads highlighting the strength, breadth and quantity of their e-book titles, which will soon number close to 5,000. The marketing campaign will target libraries primarily, with the goal of encouraging academic and public libraries across the country to expand their collections of Canadian-published e-books.

Right on, OBPO! It’s good to see resources pooled in a way that will bring attention to Canadian digital publishing. Small companies can’t always afford to divert marketing budgets away from p-books to ebooks, so collaborative, organizational campaigns are a good alternative.

If only someone could convince the Old Spice Guy to promote Canadian ebooks too…

LINKS

The OBPO’s press release, posted in full on Teleread

Old Spice Guy’s defense of libraries on Youtube

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: discoverability, ebook, publishing
Posted in Online Marketing, eBooks | No Comments »

Printed Catalogues Makin’ my Life Difficult

July 13th, 2010 by Samantha Francis

PubFight, publishing’s favourite pastime, is not all fun and games. It takes a hard-working Marketing Manager to pull together the master list for the Fakefurt Book Fair. I know, that sounds easy—but it’s not! It’s a pain in the butt, and I blame the printed catalogue.

I have to go through countless printed catalogues splayed out all over my desk and then all over the boardroom table. Then the whole staff gets together and goes through them again, making sure we haven’t missed anything. We tear out sheets and I have manually enter them (uh…) into an Excel file and double check that I haven’t missed anything. After squinting over fine print and dealing with everyone’s different interpretation of proper catalogue layout, I’ve made a list of about 130 books.

But then I’ve got to double check the information because the catalogues are at least a month old. Pub dates have changed, prices have changed, new information has surfaced. I’ve got to go through each record (uh…) and hope I’m getting the most up-to-date information elsewhere.

But despite my efforts, I have missed something: A book is cancelled. I just heard about it, someone mentioned it in an email about something else. A hot new book has just been dropped in. I heard about it from a coworker who was reading mediabistro.

If only there was a way that catalogues didn’t clutter my desk and other office surfaces, and at the expense of trees.
If only I didn’t have to retype everything.
If only catalogues were updated everyday and I could get notified when a title is cancelled, delayed or dropped in.
If only someone would create an online catalogue system that was easy to navigate and could be searched—

Oh, wait! We are. It’s called BNC CataList and it’s going to make next year’s PubFight and many of your lives a heck of a lot easier.

Stay tuned for more about this wonderful invention and the impending improvement of your daily lives.

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: CataList, ecatalogue, online catalogue, PubFight
Posted in Book Market, CataList, Online Marketing, PubFight | No Comments »

Give the Backlist a Chance

July 12th, 2010 by Samantha Francis

Yesterday marked the 50^th anniversary of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. This has me thinking about backlist. We spend a lot of time talking about the future and worrying about the frontlist, but what can set a publisher apart from the rest is a profitable backlist and arguably what can set a bookseller apart from the rest is thoughtful curating of backlist titles.

As much of our business goes electronic and online, publishers need to pay attention to their backlists. Backlist titles have a better chance of selling when they become infinitely more discoverable by being searchable and available online. While we are fussing over the frontlist, it would be wise to invest a bit of time into making backlist titles easier to find.

Embedded author videos and other fanfare are not necessary. But a complete ONIX file is. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve come across an older title online that doesn’t have more than a title, author, cover, price and publisher attached to it. Publishers can’t rely on the back cover to sell backlist because we often don’t stumble upon backlist titles on a shelf.

A book description and author bio are crucial in generating interest. Publishers don’t acquire a book without these so why would we expect readers to be any different? Awards and reviews are also powerful tools when swaying a skeptical buyer to purchase a book. BISAC codes would also help. How else am I to know the difference between an out-of-date science book and a classic sci-fi novel? (Google it? Nah, most of us won’t bother.)

So grab your customer’s attention right away and seal the deal. If you think it’s worth having a backlist title in print, give it chance at survival by filling out a killer ONIX file for it, because not every backlist title is as easy to sell as To Kill a Mockingbird.

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: backlist, BookNet Canada, Bookselling, discoverability, ONIX, publishing, To Kill a Mockingbird
Posted in BiblioShare, General BookNet, Metadata, ONIX, Online Marketing | No Comments »

Increase Sales and Lower Costs With Better Metadata

July 8th, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald

BookNet Canada teamed up with the Canadian Bookshelf to bring you Increase Sales and Lower Costs With Better Metadata: A Step-By-Step Guide for Publishers [pdf].

More and more digital platforms are sourcing their content from ONIX files, which makes it easy for publishers to take part without increasing their workload. The catch, though, is that the information needs to be in the ONIX files to be shared, and currently most publishers are not including enough information in the files they’re creating.

The types of gaps we’re seeing are often related to marketing information: is the contributor Canadian? Has the title won any awards? Is the subject matter related to a specific region? Did you include a description and an author bio? What about reviews, endorsements, tour information… ?

The point is that this is all information you already have, and it should be added to your ONIX file by everyone who touches the book throughout the life cycle. If you include this information in your ONIX feed then it will be visible (and, more importantly, discoverable ) in places such as a publisher’s website, online bookstores, library catalogues and systems, electronic catalogues like BNC CataList , and search and discovery platforms like the Canadian Bookshelf , a project of the Association of Canadian Publishers in collaboration with the Canadian Publishers Council.

To help you get started, we joined forces with the Canadian Bookshelf team to create this guide that we hope will help you do more with the information you already have. Take a look and let us know what you think — it’s a living document, so it can be updated and re-exported on the fly to ensure you’re always getting accurate, up-to-date information (but more on that, later!).

Links

Increase Sales and Lower Costs With Better Metadata: A Step-By-Step Guide for Publishers [pdf]
This guide can also be found in the Biblio Tools: The Snapshot module in our Bibliographic Standards and Certification sections of the BNC website

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: BookNet, BookNet Canada, CataList, discoverability, Metadata, ONIX, online catalogue, publishing
Posted in Biblio, Bookselling, Data Exchange Tips, Metadata, ONIX, Online Marketing | No Comments »

New research study: Do you know what to expect when a movie adaptation comes along?

July 8th, 2010 by Samantha Francis

BNC has just released its latest research study. It’s about movie adaptations and tie-ins. I don’t want to give too much away because we made it especially for SalesData subscribers. You have to log in to get the details.

We looked at how movie adaptations affect the sales of the books on which they are based and on backlists. It seems like an easy question to answer, but this report gives you information you can actually use when the next movie adaptation comes along.

We compared book sales to box-office sales and took into account marketing tools, like trailers and movie tie-in covers, to determine when audience interest in a title begins and when it fades away. Titles from the author’s backlist are also included to see if effects extend to their other books.

So we’ve done our homework. And the results are not as predictable you would think; some of the findings go against our everyday assumptions.

How long a sales spike you should expect?
What sales increases should you predict when deciding on a reprint order?
How many copies should you stock of a movie tie-in and for how long?
Are movie tie-in covers always the way to go?

Find out by logging in to BNC SalesData and following the instructions.

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: BookNet, BookNet Canada, books, movie adaptation, movie tie-in, publishing, publishing trend, repackaging, research study
Posted in Book Data and Analysis, Case Studies, General BookNet | No Comments »

Midlist: I will survive!

July 5th, 2010 by Samantha Francis

Chelsea wrote about James McGrath Morris’s piece in HuffPo last Tuesday and made some really enlightening observations (”Every title is ‘face-out’ online’—Chelsea, you’re blowing my mind!).

It’s true that metadata, a.k.a. the ONIX files that publishers craft so carefully and thoroughly, can actually make midlist authors more visible online. This not only impacts ebooks, but regular books too. If I can find a book’s info online, I can order it online or go down the street and buy it at my local bookstore. Not only that, but if I wander into a bookstore and think of a very specific subject I’d like to read about (for example, cheese difficulties), the bookseller can look it up and find it for me, no matter how obscure (order Cheese Problems Solved edited by P.L.H. McSweeney).

But I think there’s more to contend with in Morris’s piece. His assumption is that midlist authors will become extinct. I think that’s a little melodramatic, especially given his definition of the midlist author as someone who earns out a modest advance. Modest advances will still be given and still be earned out by some. It is probably more accurate to say that the midlist might change, that some authors will no longer qualify while others will join the club. And that’s nothing new.

Going online does not mean that the book-buying public will only have eyes for bestsellers. In fact, it is the backlist that stands to benefit the most from online discoverability. Our market will not narrow, but it may break up into specialized sections. Our tastes will not suddenly homogenize, instead we will be empowered to find and buy what we truly want.

How carefully do you tag your book’s ONIX files? Are you sure I can find it? Better be, if you want it to be part of the midlist.

LINKS:

Chelsea’s BNC blog post

James McGrath Morris’s piece in HuffPo

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: advances, author, BookNet Canada, bookseller, discoverability, e-book, ebook, Metadata, Midlist, ONIX, online, publishing
Posted in BiblioShare, General BookNet, Metadata, ONIX, Online Marketing, eBooks | No Comments »

Midlist authors might actually be more visible online: A rebuttal to HuffPo

June 29th, 2010 by Chelsea Theriault

A few weeks ago The Huffington Post posted an article by James McGrath Morris called “Will eBooks Make Midlist Authors Extinct?”, a suggestion so dramatic (a.k.a Internet-friendly) that it led to much linking and re-blogging within the publishing community. The biggest difference between this article and the other “end-is-nigh” book industry predictions—a current favourite of most media—is that Morris narrows his scope to examining how the digital supply chain might effect the un-fancy, un-sexy long-tail. He argues that the midlist writers who sell enough books to sustain themselves but not enough to be considered bestselling will

But wait, don’t give up hope yet, that sweeping statement is not entirely true! Sure, browsing is different online and recommendation engines might favour bestselling authors over the lesser-known ones, but a digital tool does exist that is much more powerful and trustworthy than fickle old “serendipity”: metadata.

Here are some reasons why ebook metadata could help the midlist author:

1) It makes books discoverable. If an ebook comes hand-in-hand with rich metadata (excerpts, descriptions, author info, and carefully-chosen subject classifications and keywords groomed for SEO), potential readers will find it through web searching. In a bookstore, on the other hand, unless the bookseller happens to have an encyclopedic knowledge of every title in the store (unlikely) it’s difficult to help a customer find a book on a specific topic (ex. “teens and NASCAR”) if the subject terms or keywords aren’t in the title itself

2) It tells retailers how to promote the book. If publishers provide ebook retailers with more marketing information (something requested by Kobo’s Michael Tamblyn at BookCamp Toronto last month), titles will be promoted effectively; we can think about the “Top 10 Hair-Raising Halloween Reads”-type list as the digital equivalent of the bricks-and-mortar table display Morris mentions

3) Correct metadata can level the playing field. Every title is “face-out” online, while in bookstores they are mostly spined and only a lucky few are face-out. It’s true that customers are attracted to cover design, and this works the same online as it does in person. That means a customer browsing a list of ebooks, organized by subject, pub date, and price, will see midlist titles on equal footing as bestsellers.

Finally, here’s a real-world example of good metadata increasing ebook sales at UK retailer Foyles.co.uk, as described on The Bookseller:

James McGrath Morris, “Will eBooks Make Midlist Authors Extinct?” on The Huffington Post

Recaps of Michael Tamblyn’s ebook data requests for Kobo at BookCamp and Book Summit

The Bookseller, “Faber and Transworld dominate e-book sales, says Foyles”

Share and Enjoy:

Posted in Online Marketing, eBooks | No Comments »

BNC 101: What is ONIX?

June 24th, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald

ONIX for Books is an international standard for exchanging important information about books and related products.

ONIX stands for ONline Information eXchange and is an XML-based language used for computer-to-computer communication. Since it is XML-based, it follows the same rules we outlined last week in BNC 101: What is XML?

ONIX doesn’t do anything; instead, it lets you describe what something is.

ONIX is a way of tagging information about your books — such as the ISBN, title, contributor, description, price, and availability. All of this data is needed to support the sale of your books in the supply chain, but it is also becoming more and more visible as websites and catalogues can use this metadata to populate their pages.

Where can you see ONIX?

Look at any major online retailer: all of the information that’s there is from an ONIX file. ONIX is also the information you see about a title in BNC SalesData . Soon, you’ll also be able to see it in BNC CataList and the ACP’s Canadian Bookshelf .

Why is ONIX important?

ONIX is crucial for effective marketing and for communicating with retailers and the customer.

The Sales Side

ONIX is how you transfer all of the information about your books that is needed to support sales. Here, I’m talking about information, such as:

Availability
Embargo dates
Expected shipping dates
Prices in different currencies
Publication dates
Rights information
Suppliers for countries and territories

Example: Have you reduced a price? Updating it in your ONIX file lets a retailer know about it and could influence them to increase their order.

The Marketing Side

ONIX is also important for marketing since it allows you to include information that goes beyond the basics, such as:

Awards
Canadian authorship
Descriptions
Excerpts
First chapters
Headlines
Initial print runs
Links to images, video, and audio
More titles from the same author
Other formats that the book is available in
Promotions information
Reviews and endorsements
Series and sets
Similar titles
And the list goes on…

Example: Neglecting to include Candian authorship and other regional information means that your titles will not appear in important discoverability platforms like the Canadian Bookshelf.

Everything you should be including in an ONIX file is information you already have, but for some reason a lot of publishers leave it out.

How can you make your ONIX files better?

Don’t make the ONIX file the responsibility of the one techy person in the office. Instead, make it something everyone is responsible for throughout the life cycle of the book. An editor, publicist, rights associate, and sales manager all have different material they can add and update in an ONIX file.
Put the information in as you get it instead of creating the ONIX file at the end of the process. You can create the ONIX file at acquisition and fill it out as material comes in.
Update your file when something changes and send it to your trading partners again — it should always be up-to-date.
Proofread your ONIX files. I’m serious — the sloppy errors that can be found in ONIX files are horrendous.

Some History

ONIX was originally developed in 2000 by the Association of American Publishers and EDItEUR . The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) in the US and Book Industry Communication (BIC) in the UK joined the team after that, and now there are representatives from around the world, including: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden and the Republic of Korea.

More Information

You can find all of our introductory blog posts in the BNC 101 category .

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: BNC 101, book, marketing, ONIX, sales, XML
Posted in BNC 101, Biblio, BiblioShare, Education, Metadata, ONIX | No Comments »

Metadata Standards Visualization

June 24th, 2010 by Noah Genner

This is truly awe inspiring, overwhelming and very very cool:

Image from Stephen’s Lighthouse

“The sheer number of metadata standards in the cultural heritage sector is overwhelming, and their inter-relationships further complicate the situation. A new resource, Seeing Standards: A Visualization of the Metadata Universe, , is intended to assist planners with the selection and implementation of metadata standards. Seeing Standards is in two parts: (1) a poster-sized visualization plotting standards based on their applicability in a variety of contexts, and (2) a glossary of metadata standards in either poster or pamphlet form.

Each of the 105 standards listed is evaluated on its strength of application to defined categories in each of four axes: community, domain, function, and purpose. Standards more strongly allied with a category are displayed towards the center of each hemisphere, and those still applicable but less strongly allied are displayed along the edges. The strength of a standard in a given category is determined by a mixture of its adoption in that category, its design intent, and its overall appropriateness for use in that category.

The standards represented are among those most heavily used or publicized in the cultural heritage community, though certainly not all standards that might be relevant are included. A small set of the metadata standards plotted on the main visualization also appear as highlights above the graphic. These represent the most commonly known or discussed standards for cultural heritage metadata.

Work preparing Seeing Standards was supported by a professional development grant from the Indiana University Libraries. Content was developed by Jenn Riley, Metadata Librarian in the Indiana University Digital Library Program. Design work was performed by Devin Becker of the Indiana University School of Library and Information Science, and soon to be Digital Initiatives & Scholarly Communications Librarian at the University of Idaho.

I hope this resource proves to be helpful to those working with metadata standards in libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions.”

- Jenn Riley, Inquiring Librarian

Share and Enjoy:

Posted in General BookNet | No Comments »

September 2010
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Aug
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

Booknet Canada Blog

What’s Happening

What about Canada?

Links

Testing Anthologize

My results

So, why Confluence?

My Mission

Ease of Use

WYSIWYG Editor

Version Control

Commenting

PDF Export

Customizable Stylesheets

The Result

Up Next

Links

1. Tool Tips—Amuse-bouche

2. Help Manual—Ordering From the Menu

3. Contact Us—Dessert

4. Training and Other Assistance—The Buffet Dinner

BISAC Subject Headings

Tip

Example

BISAC Regional Themes

Example

Links

Where can you see ONIX?

Why is ONIX important?

The Sales Side

The Marketing Side

How can you make your ONIX files better?

Some History

More Information

Recent Posts

Categories

Calendar

Archives

Recent Comments

Contributors