I’m going to let you in on a little secret: BookNet Canada can produce regional bestseller lists in BNC SalesData. Yep. We could tell you what the top 10 nonfiction books are in British Columbia and they may not match up to Ontario’s top 10.
We currently only produce bestseller lists for the Canadian market as a whole. But with this new capability, things get a little more interesting. What will we find?
Richard Nash needs no introduction but if he does you can do no better than to tune into the talk he gave at the 2010 BookNet Technology Forum. Nash has been re-imagining the business of publishing for some time and, in fact, left his post at Soft Skull to begin building that re-imagining.
Red Lemonade, his new project, is all about connecting readers and writers and has that social community goodness baked right in. There are no walled gardens here.
Does this on its own reinvent publishing?
A recent New York Times article pointed to the need for retailers to retool their sites for mobile shopping. There is an opportunity here for book retailers too, if not exactly to lead the way, then at least not to lag too far behind. It would seem like there is no time like the present to get your e-commerce site optimized for the mobile space. It isn’t really rocket science. Here are a few things you may want to consider when thinking about this…
There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about Harry Hurt III’s upcoming e-book. Hurt sought out many sponsors for his book, which sounds like it involved a lot of travel (i.e., is expensive for the author to write). The sponsors gave him money, equipment and products in exchange for ads inside the book and “significant product placement woven throughout [the book’s] narrative.”
Will readers mind the advertisements in the book? Is it possible to work product placement into your narrative seamlessly?
Every year BookNet Canada publishes The Canadian Book Market. I think you can guess what it’s about.
The CBM is the comprehensive guide to the Canadian book trade. It includes in-depth analysis, comparative data and statistics making it essential reading for anyone involved in the book industry in Canada.
As the industry changes and becomes more and more competitive, can you afford not to know it inside out?
BookNet Canada is a non-profit organization that develops technology, standards, and education to serve the Canadian book industry. Founded in 2002 to address systemic challenges in the industry, BookNet Canada supports publishing companies, booksellers, wholesalers, distributors, sales agents, industry associations, literary agents, media, and libraries across the country.
