File Under "Bleedin' Obvious": Good Data Drives Sales

Nielsen Bookdata recently released a white paper/sales sheet on metadata enhancement which presents some real data on the direct link between deep accurate metadata and increased sales and long term revenue.  Unsurprisingly, the document finishes by noting that BookData provides enhanced metadata services for a fee which, assuming publishers don't have the where with all to handle this very basic activity themselves, they would be well advised to contract with Nielsen (or someone similar).

It occurs to me that there's some circuitous illogical aspect to working with a third party data enhancement provider: If, as a publisher I don't have the means to provide this deep information in the first place, how will I be able to know that the deep metadata services provided by a third party are accurate and optimal?  Nielsen will say "increased sales" and they'd be correct based on their own analysis yet it is always going to be the author, editor and marketing person at the publisher who is best placed to define and optimize their metadata.  Contracting this function out is not only likely to be sub-optimal but might also result in a staff who's experience becomes removed from the realities of market dynamics.  This is not to suggest that the third party will do a bad job but that the benefits to the publisher in doing it themselves far out weighs the benefits both in the short term and long term.

And what are the results of better metadata?  Neilsen's report is quite specific from this sample:

White Paper: The Link Between Metadata and Sales

Looking at the top selling 100,000 titles from 2011ii we analysed the volume sales for titles where either the BIC Basic or image flag was missing, and compared these with titles where one of the flags were missing and titles where both the BIC Basic and image flags were present, indicating that the BIC Basic standard was met. Figure 1.1 shows the average sales per title for these four different sets of records.

The positive impact of supplying complete BIC Basic data and an image is clear. Records without complete BIC Basic data or an image sell on average 385 copies. Adding an image sees sales per ISBN increase to 1,416, a 268% boost. Records with complete BIC Basic data but no image have average sales under 437 copies, but when we look at records with all of the necessary data and image
requirements, average sales reach 2,205. This represents an increase of 473% in comparison to those records which have neither the complete BIC Basic data elements or an image. Figure 1.2 shows a direct comparison between all records with insufficient data to meet the BIC Basic standard, and those that meet the requirements.

the average sales across all records with incomplete BIC Basic elements are 1,113 copies per title, with the complete records seeing an 98% increase in average sales.

Titles which hold all four enhanced metadata elements sell on average over 1,000 more copies than those that don’t hold any enhanced metadata, and almost 700 more copies that those that hold three out of the four enhanced metadata elements. In percentage terms, titles with three metadata elements see an average sales boost of 18%, and those with all four data elements 55% when compared to titles with no enhanced metadata elements.

In the still early days of Amazon we were always throwing out the (anic)data point that a book with a cover image was 8x more likely to sell versus one without.  Sadly we are still discussing much the same issue.

Nielsen BookData NZ Sets Milestone

Good news from New Zealand, all nine New Zealand booksellers voted in Nielsen BookData's NZ Booksellers Choice Award for book of the year. As they note, "For the first time in the history of the Nielsen BookData New Zealand Booksellers' Choice Award, several titles received precisely the same number of nominations, making it impossible to create a shortlist of four titles." The seeming statistical impossibility was left unexplained by the data aggregator/market researcher. As a solution, the company decided to create a "long short list" of possible winners. The list amounts to eight titles and the sheer enormity of the task required of Booksellers to make the actual selection is likely to induce rioting.

In fairness, here is the list:

- A Nest of singing Birds: One Hundred Years of the New Zealand School Journal by Gregory O'Brien, published by Learning Media
- Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning by Jennifer Hay, published by the Christchurch Art Gallery
- Edwin and Matilda: An Unlikely Love Story by Laurence Fearnley, published by Penguin Books NZ Ltd
- Mau Moko: The World of Maori Moko by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, published by Penguin Books NZ Ltd
- New New Zealand Houses by Patrick Reynolds and John Walsh, published by Random House New Zealand Ltd
- New Zealand's Wilderness Heritage by Les Molloy and Craig Potton, published by Craig Potton Publishing
- Ribbons of Grace by Maxine Alterio, published by Penguin Books NZ Ltd
- Soundtrack: 118 Great New Zealand Albums by Grant Smithies, published by Craig Potton Publishing
- The Road to Castle Hill by Christine Fernyhough with Louise Callan, published by Random House New Zealand Ltd

(At least they are books and not rulers - which is an inside joke that only my past colleagues will get).

"Hey Nielsen" What About Books?

Nielsen is capturing the true voice of the consumer with the launch of their new “Hey Nielsen” social networking website. Designed to capture consumers immediate reactions to television, movie and music programming, the site launched in beta a few weeks ago. Nielsen is the market researcher most responsible for what we end up watching, listening to and going to see. They are not necessarily responsible for what we read however, but more on that later. Nielsen hopes that the Hey Nielsen site becomes the social monitor for all pop culture although my initial experimentation with the site seems to indicate that most people are focused on television.

Hey Nielsen works by ranking positive or negative comments based on the volume of submissions related to specific content. A “Hey Nielsen” score is attributed accordingly. Essentially, this social website becomes a panel: Perhaps not as organized or managed as a traditional Nielsen panel but by definition more broad based. Nielsen will be able to capture the immediate feedback generated by new shows, music, movies and other media – even celebrities. This could be a fundamental step forward over the old model of set top boxes and exit surveys.

Crucially for the book industry we don’t have such a facility and it is ironic that Nielsen having such a research presence in the book industry has not placed books into to the Hey Nielsen network. We are generally familiar with the BookScan POS service but it has been left largely to subscribers of this service (both in the UK and US) to derive their own insight into what the raw data suggests about sales trends, tastes and mores. I read about Hey Nielsen before I went to Frankfurt and it was at the supply chain meeting that Nielsen presented more of what we would like to see of their analysis capability.

In a presentation entitled Towards a Better Understanding of a Consumer Jonathan Nowell and Julie Meynick discussed the existing publishing market and environment. The suggested for example that contrary to conventional belief the publishing market in the UK is reasonably healthy with unit sales up 5.4% over last year and up 43% since 2001. In comparison with other media – particularly TV and newspapers – book readership has more than held its own. They followed this over view with some statistics on where books were selling and what genres were moving. There would be little surprise that published material such as hotel and travel guides, dictionaries and astrology are not competing well with online alternatives and are seeing decreased sales.

The last segment of the presentation concerned a review of the panel HarperCollins constructed to better understand their readers. (It is not clear how much direct involvement Nielsen had in this research). Researchers asked over 1000 people to rank how they used different media for different tasks and also describing their visceral reactions to what reading and books meant to them. Nielsen sales data was used to build demographic profiles of readers which in turn has been used by Harpercollins to develop genre profiles of the types of book purchasers that were attracted to specific genres. In the presentation, Nielsen showed the seven defined profiles within Cooking as an example. Each of these profiles has deeper demographic information associated with it to describe the buyers in this segment.

Nielsen showed in this presentation how psychographic data from panel information and sales information from point of sale data could be merged to create a more detailed set of information about existing and potential consumers. This information in turn creates the framework for effective marketing and promotion campaigns that should drive sales.

I saw Nowell later the next day and told him the presentation was interesting and why they couldn’t do something like this in the US. After a pause, he told me to wait and see. In the short term, why can’t they use Hey Nielsen?

Krakoff Dies

From PaidContent.org: Bob Krakoff died suddenly last night at the age of 72. Krakoff, had recently taken over the VNU business media properties in the wake of the Nielsen privatisation. In his sucessful media career, Krakoff ran many of the Reed Business magazines and reference companies and rose to vice-chairman at RE.

Paidcontent.org.