Last night’s kick-off of the new CMPTO season left me wanting more, more from each of the speakers. Amy Martin from Wattpad, Robert Wheaton from Random House and Nick Edouard from Buzz Data did a fabulous job of schooling us on innovative business practices and data driven decision making.
Is That a Kobo in Your Pocket?
Code Meet Print TO: The Three Rs!
A Look at DBW's New E-book Bestseller Lists
This Monday, Digital Book World announced that they will be publishing weekly e-book bestseller lists every Monday on their site and in their daily newsletter. When it comes to e-books we’re all quite hungry know just what exactly is going on so it’s great to see DBW injecting unique insight into sales trends. Because the DBW lists are not based on retailer-supplied raw sales data, I thought it would be a good exercise to understand how the lists are generated, what they can and can’t show us, and what questions remain open.
Canadian Book Buyers and Their Relationship to Libraries
Voracious readers will often beg or borrow their books from anywhere possible—buy books in person or online, borrow from the library or steal from friends. As part of The Canadian Book Consumer we have the opportunity to drill down into topical questions and we’re interested in understanding more about how book buyers use the library.
Getting Editorial Insight from Consumer Data
As e-book publishing matures, the need for consumer insight becomes more urgent and the lack of it makes businesses increasingly vulnerable. The only analytics available with print were sales and reviews which didn’t make for a particularly enlightening post-mortem. Eventually with the web you also got customer reviews/ratings, blogging and social chatter, but we’re only now beginning to monitor these things systematically and they don’t always make it back to the editorial group.
So Long, Farewell, and Thanks for All the Data
When I first stepped into the BookNet office, it felt a little like I had the soft-footed and sneaky steps of a technology fugitive (albeit a sweaty one). Oh sure I’d been through publishing school, where I had the opportunity to dive into the world of tech and books galore, but that was … well, school. I wasn’t one of those tech and data people in real life, was I?
