Selling more books online: Kieron Smith
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How good is your metadata? Helping readers find the content they want, in a well-organised way, is fundamental to selling more books online. There are set rules aimed at standardising how publishers, booksellers and others describe each book. Kieron Smith (Digital Director, Blackwells Bookshops) walked us through what we should be thinking about and what will ultimately lead to more online sales at BookMachine in Oxford last week. Here are his slides.
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Selling more books online: Kieron Smith
- 1. Selling More Books Online Kieron Smith Digital Director, Blackwell’s
- 2. What I’m going to cover • A little bit about Blackwell’s • What’s the challenge? • Hygiene Factor Metadata & richer information • The missing link • Concluding words
- 3. About Blackwell’s Blackwell’s has been supplying academic books and specialist publications for over 130 years and is the leading academic bookseller in the UK. Blackwell’s includes 35 full time trading shops on the high street and university campuses. This rises to 80 at peak times via temporary ‘pop-up’ shops serving over 1.2 million students across 56 higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. Blackwell’s booksellers are renowned for their expertise, depth of knowledge and love of books - a tradition which has been maintained since the first Blackwell’s shop opened its doors in 1879.
- 4. Our own platform learn.Blackwell.co.uk & ecommerce site Blackwells.co.uk
- 5. 129,864,880
- 6. 0 75000 150000 225000 300000 Year 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 New books published in the US
- 8. Sixty-one percent of book purchases by frequent book buyers take place online, but only seven percent of those buyers said they discovered that book online. Book choosing methods on
- 9. http://www.slideshare.net/IfBookThen/2011- international-book-market-overview Offline sales see an increase of 35% for titles which have all enhanced metadata elements present. Online sales see a massive 178% increase for titles which have all metadata elements present in comparison to those with no enhanced metadata. Well duh.
- 10. Bug List
- 12. Bug list 5. Why when I click on an author name does it not disambiguate between two authors of the same name g.g. Stephen King 6. Why can’t I see all the versions of the same book? (i.e. is there a new version of this OOP title? Graphic Novel Version, abridged, audio etc.? 7. Why can’t I see other language versions of the same title? If you want to find the French edition of ‘A Study in Scarlett’ then how will you know it’s called ‘Une étude en rouge’? 8. Even problematic in a global environment around books retitled in the same language UK e.g. Love in Black and White
- 13. Bug list 9. What age range/academic level is this book in the school system of the country I’m in now? BIC and BISAC codes include some school levels for the UK/US – more tenuous in other locations but Thema could help. 10. Can I search for a book in Latin and non-Latin character sets, a title may well have a dual existence – for example in Greek and Latin Alphabets 11. What inspired the book – what was inspired by the book? 12. Customers often know part of a book – ‘it has a poem with daffodils in it’
- 14. Thema - Allows us the chance to present different shop fronts to different countries - Huge help in helping us to enable groupings of books which make sense We’ve been stuck in 1995 bookselling with a very static view of book browsing and presentation online…
- 16. …and we’ve not even talked about • Look inside the book • Additional images & back covers • Professional reviews • Video content • Categorisation…
- 17. N=1 R=G
- 19. Looking to create an Agile culture across the business. Tools to learn and share collectively, for Booksellers, collaborators (authors, publishers, etc.) and for customers. Thinking like a start-up, albeit one which is 137 years old.
- 20. The Missing Link • The ability to link all these drops of data into one big picture which can connect people to book information beyond each individual data bucket. • Why when I click on an author name does it not disambiguate between two authors of the same name e.g. Stephen King • Ways to use information in new and exciting ways of visualisation. • Some of this is technical. • Some is human.
- 21. » Working together? house
- 23. • Metadata is exciting. • Searching for and finding titles in such a large pool is challenging. • How does your data help a customer in this context. • The importance of getting the basics right can’t be underestimated. • There is huge potential in additional partnerships over data and information linking that could add value for readers. Conclusions
- 24. Thank You
Editor's Notes
- http://booksearch.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/books-of-world-stand-up-and-be-counted.html
- 1881 – 2,991 1900 – 6,356 2007 – 276,649 “On Demand” and short-run books to 134,773 2002-2007 22% increase traditional titles 2002-2007 313% increase, “On Demand” and short-run books http://www.lulu.com/static/pr/6_01_05.php by 2052 Authorgeddon – Americans who write books will outnumber those who read them
- We thought we’d seen this before... In the late 1960s Marshall McLuhan highlighted that the Xerox came as a reverse flip as the end of the Gutenberg cycle; whereas Gutenberg made everybody a reader, Xerox makes everybody a publisher.
- http://paidcontent.org/2013/01/17/why-online-book-discovery-is-broken-and-how-to-fix-it/
- That a wonderful product has been reduced to a flat image and no discernible difference between an ebook and a physical one
- Being able to correctly order series – these could be numbered collected works, a set of titles, children’s series, character or educational titles (ORT for example). Ability to identify the original publication date of a title. Ability to identify and clearly show if a title is self published. Ability to disambiguate POD; Public Domain Internet Content Works, ** kill Public Domain Works – Text, Public Domain Works Facsimile, Professional Original Work, Self Published Original Work.
- 6. Why can’t I see all the versions of the same book? (i.e. is there a new version of this OOP title? Graphic Novel Version, abridged, audio etc.? 7. Can I search for a book in Latin and non-Latin character sets, a title may well have a dual existence – for example in Greek and Latin Alphabets 8. Why can’t I see other language versions of the same title? If you want to find the French edition of ‘A Study in Scarlett’ then how will you know it’s called ‘Une étude en rouge’? 9. Even problematic in a global environment around books retitled in the same language UK e.g. Love in Black and White
- 10. What age range/academic level is this book in the school system of the country I’m in now? BIC and BISAC codes include some school levels for the UK/US – more tenuous in other locations but Thema could help. 11. Customers often know part of a book – ‘it has a poem with daffodils in it’ 12. Dimension data – I need to know how big and heavy the book is otherwise I cannot calculate the correct price, nor help a customer find the right one & many more of course
- So… The Catcher in the Rye is currently classed as: BIC : FA Modern and Contemporary Fiction Under Thema – it has the potential to become much richer indeed: FBA – Modern and Contemporary Fiction FBX Narrative Theme: Coming of Age Geographic and time qualifiers IKBB-US-NAKC – New York City 3MPQM – c1950-1959 Thema also has adult colouring books -
- Organisational access to global resources – essential to serve and adapt to these changes on a global level. Used to be about creating a product for a global audience. Now it has been reversed and it’s one product for each customer, whether created or co-created with global resources accessed. N=1 R=G The fastest growing brand on the planet at the moment is Android – it’s shared across an ecosystem of organisations and individuals
- What inspired the book – what was inspired by the book?
- Opportunities to link via semantic data – The Suspicions of Mr Whicher non fiction title by Kate Summerscale – linking of data could reveal where it was set in Wiltshire, that it has won the Whitbread Award – that it’s about the first detective case in the UK, a case that inspired Dickens and Conan Doyle opening up many titles and opportunities for further sales. Data represented on the web semantically is growing rapidly. It’ll be a challenge but an important one to challenge if we want to get beyond set product data and link all book knowledge in a meaningful way.