CataList

Finding Award-Winners on CataList

Canadians love their books. A recent National Reading Campaign survey found that 95% of Canadians read for pleasure, and books are their preferred reading format. But with so much out there to read, how does anyone decide what to pick up next?

Often, avid readers’ holiday wishlists are filled with the winners and finalists of Canadian book awards such as Canada Reads, the Giller Prize, and the Governor General’s Literary Awards. To make it easy for retailers and libraries to find and order Canadian award finalists, we’ve created catalogues for all the major awards on BNC CataList.

Library Pricing for Digital Products

With the growing list of ebooks being made available to libraries for patron loan, we’ve seen a lot of experimentation with different publisher payment models, from loan limitations to different up-front pricing for libraries with unlimited loan licensing. If your publishing house has opted for this second option — or even if you have the same pricing for consumer and library purchase, but you want to be clear about this to the supply chain — how do you indicate this in your ONIX record?

PubFight 2013: The Art of the "Comp"

Comp titles in CataListLast week on the blog, 2012 PubFight champ Bill Holt weighed in on his scientific approach to the PubFight auction. But publishers and retailers alike know there is more to acquisitions and frontlist buying than science alone. While science certainly plays an important role, a lot of seasoned editors and buyers have good instincts about how a new book will sell based on experience—the art of buying rather than the science, if you will. But if you’re new to the industry, how do you learn this art?

BNC CataList 2.0

We’re coming up to the first anniversary of the BNC CataList launch, and to celebrate we launched CataList version 2.0. This one goes out to the legions of devoted CataList users who have taken the time to share their thoughts and ideas on how CataList could be improved.

This release included a number of user-requested features and functions. The full details on how to use all these new features can be found on our What’s New in BNC CataList page, but here’s a brief recap of the new features that are available on the site today.

Welcome to the Digital Cafe: May I Take Your Order?

The dialogue below was overheard at a BNC digital catalogue cafe over the holidays. The patron was getting ready to order some tasty offerings from BNC CataList and was curious about the new feature available. We’ve added a new option for the PDF version of the digital catalogue, allowing retailers who want a print version of catalogues but don’t need all the detail available to them to print using the 5-per-page option.

Sit back and relax while we walk you through the update and show you what’s on the menu.

It's the Little Things: CataList Details

We have been busy with CataList lately. Yes, we’ve been signing up publishers and booksellers on the system and helping them get started. We’ve had several online demos. But what people don’t realize is that we’re also continuing to work on CataList itself. We’re adding new features to it all the time in response to user feedback. It’s the little things that make a difference with a product like this, and we wanted to show you three of the ones that have been most useful so far.