BISG in the News

Maybe Selling More Books Is

Easier Than We Thought
A Big Part Two from the Book Industry Study Group

By Michael Cader (Publishers Lunch) -- The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) reaffirmed a winning formula for conference value today with their second "Making Information Pay" session: keep the price low, limit your event to half a work-day, and offer speakers with focused presentations on topics of inherently practicality.

This morning's opening presentation from Barnes & Noble vp of inventory management and vendor relations (and current BISG board chair) Joe Gonnella went even further, perhaps comprising the most valuable and effective 15 minutes of conference time I've experienced in five years worth of events. Gonnella's message was stunningly simple and on-point, and at the same time echoed a theme that we've asserted more casually here over the past few weeks: there are very easy things you could be doing, at little or now extra cost, that are guaranteed to help you sell more books.

In Gonnella's case, the point was this: Barnes & Noble's database contains about 3.5 million active ISBNs-of which 2 million of those ISBNs are "missing" in one way or another and can be ordered and sold the chain. More specifically, Gonnella reported having $6.5 million in orders for books that are listed as "out of stock with no due date," to which he said, "Please print them." And he has $5 million of open purchase orders for titles that are past pub date (and will need to get cancelled if the books aren't produced). On this point he remarked to the group's amusement, "Do you know how hard it is to get a PO out of Barnes & Noble?"

To frame missed sales opportunities another way, Gonnella revealed that last year, BN sold nearly $400 million at retail of trade books that have since been declared out-of-print/out-of-stock indefinitely. I'm mixing metaphors and speech sequence a little bit here, but at another point Gonnella framed it this way: "On 4.2 million titles, I have to say to any customer who asks, 'I can't get you a copy.'"

In a series of profound ways, Gonnella illuminated the ways in which data errors and basic neglect are standing in the way of sales and confusing and frustrating customers. And you don't have to be a data geek to relate to some the examples cited. Of the active titles they can get at, over a third are missing some key element of "commentary, " and even among the chain's top 100,000 titles, 10 percent are missing commentary-meaning that basic pieces of information to tell readers about the book aren't there.

Thirty-percent of active titles are missing a cover scan, and that number would be higher if BN hadn't scanned a large number of covers themselves. Sixty to seventy percent of titles are missing both a publisher discount code, and/or BISAC and ONIX data.

He recommends that the data and "commentary" capture should be built into the publishing process from the very beginning: "It should start with the editor. If you acquire the book, you do the title card. The editor and the author have a vision--et them do the work. We're here to put the author's book in the mind of the reader.

Gonnella shared his A List of just 12 companies that do an excellent job of providing data to the chain-Chronicle; Dover; Harcourt; Harlequin; Harvard University Press; Houghton Trade; IPG; Wiley; Sage; S&S; Time Warner; University of Michigan Press-along with a B List of about 30 more companies, along with the admonition, "If you're not on the A list or the B list, you're failing. And we don't want to fail you."

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The case laid out by Gonnella was reiternerated and compounded through different frames of reference season's buy. Some of the reps think this is a totally ridiculous exercise. But I want to know if we consistently underbought or overbought."

On the data side, she produced an effective metaphor that even the data-averse can relate to: "The bibliographic data that comes in is really your title's resume." As we all know, on resumes, things like commas and spelling matter. (B&T caught one error in which they had large unfulfilled library backorders for an author listed as "Andrew, Greeley.") And the other problem, echoed by others during the event, is: "Who writes your investment's resume? It's usually an entry level or low-level employee."

Other presenters included Books-A-Million vp of information technology Susan Harwood and Baker & Taylor svp for merchandising Jean Srnecz.

Harwood presented through a variety of specific examples the ways in which very basic mishandling of simple bar codes can lead to exponential mismanagement and waste of inventory, sales, and sales tracking. She reminded people to put themselves in the mindset of a low wage checkout clerk trying to figure out what to scan. Like Barnes & Noble, BAM also encounters a never-ending stream of incorrect data, which becomes doubly destructive because it falls to buyers to spend huge amounts of their time in correcting that data. As was made abundantly clear, that waste means less time for buyers to buy more books.

Jean Srnecz reports experiencing the same problems at B&T, with an even firmer message back to publishers' reps: "We've the buyers if the title isn't on file [properly, in B&T's system], send the rep away."

And they have other market-knowledge expectations that reps often fail to meet: "We expect the publishers' reps to know comparable titles. We also want to know how we did with last

c was to note that last year, "1.2 million records were updated at least once" for corrections.

Srnecz made one suggestion that resonated immediately on the floor: with all the current codes in place, there's nothing that serves as a unique author identifier-something that's sorely needed in a world of exploding title counts and online searches. (We queried from the floor about something that another major wholesaler talked to us about at LBF: there's no code, or even system for passing along information about, licensed selling territory, which will become a bigger issue going forward.)

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I'm the first to admit, a few years ago, I would have had no idea what these people were talking about. I still don't know ONIX stands for, and I know more than I care to about the coming of the 13-digit ISBN (which is still just the tip of the iceberg). But here are the takeaways that should work for everyone.

Today's book business is stunningly complex. We've heard from nearly every major player on the wholesale, distribution and retail side at their valiant efforts in which a flat market spreads its dollars over an exponentially explosive variety of product from tens of thousands of suppliers. In one light, it's a minor miracle every time a book makes it way all the way through to a reader, and some money finds its way all the way back to the author.

Furthermore, all the "bibliographic stuff" that used to remain mostly hidden is now glaringly transparent online, and thus confuses not just your selling partners, but readers themselves.

But as Gonnella said, "If you're in the book business and have not chosen to see yourself as a bibliographer, then you're in the wrong business." Here is the hopeful part: simple steps to better communication, well-executed, are virtually guaranteed to produce more sales and more sell-through. If a fraction of the time most people spend on getting blurbs, giving sales pitches and gathering sales materials, lobbying the media, and so on was sent on clearly and consistently expressing basic information about the author and the book, the concrete payoff is clearly there. As Srnecz said, "Data is totally the foundation for everything we do. It's unglamorous and dull-but it's how we get books to customers [and grow the marketplace, and improve returns]."

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