Price and availability data: it ought to be such a simple matter, just a question of telling the supply chain that a price has changed or a title has gone out of stock. However, it is anything but - as the P & A working party we set up recently has been finding out.
To begin with, there is a common assumption that there is a single BIC code list for non-availability. There isn't. If you are using EDI to transmit availability data, you use the BIC/Tradacoms list 54. If you are an ONIX user you need List 54 if you're still with version 2 or lists 54 and 55 (publishing status and product availability) if you've moved to version 3. If you've implemented the BIC P & A web service standard, there's yet another list.
Next, the EDI codes serve multiple purposes: to indicate availability status in a data feed; but more significantly as a reason for non-supply when acknowledging an EDI order. To make matters worse, code list 54 is an all-purpose list which includes status and acknowledgment responses for all the different supply chain players and has to serve all their needs. Our first task is to sort out which codes should be used by whom, to mean what, and then how they should be interpreted by the recipient.
And that really is the nub of the problem: the whole concept of availability changes depending on who is asking and why. Every link in the supply chain changes the availability perspective.
We have a big task on our hands. And we would welcome input from any of you who would like to be involved.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
THE FUTURE OF METADATA
Although BIC has been promoting the value of accurate early product information for more than a decade, we still only have 25 companies certified by our Product Data Excellence scheme. It's true that among those 25 there are companies which account for a high proportion of the books published in the UK, but it is still a reminder of how many publishers fail to understand the vital role that metadata plays - not all of it in obvious ways - in making sales and enabling discovery.
If that is true of physical books, how much more so for the discovery of digital content. The need for full and appropriate metadata in the right place at the right time is going to make massive demands on both publishers and resellers if the market for e-books and other digital content is going to grow and prosper.
These are the issues which have been under scrutiny by our Metadata Futures Group in its work to date. What are the appropriate strategies which should be adopted by publishers to cope with the growing demands from their trading partners for accurate and unambiguous metadata? Some of the answers are what you might expect: support industry standards, migrate to ONIX 3, identify products with as much granularity as you and your entire supply chain needs, develop system structures and hierarchies which minimise duplication and bloat... You can read the report on the group's activity to date here.
There aren't any easy answers, though. There is cost - and maybe no quantifiable ROI - attached to all these developments, and time is not on our side.
If that is true of physical books, how much more so for the discovery of digital content. The need for full and appropriate metadata in the right place at the right time is going to make massive demands on both publishers and resellers if the market for e-books and other digital content is going to grow and prosper.
These are the issues which have been under scrutiny by our Metadata Futures Group in its work to date. What are the appropriate strategies which should be adopted by publishers to cope with the growing demands from their trading partners for accurate and unambiguous metadata? Some of the answers are what you might expect: support industry standards, migrate to ONIX 3, identify products with as much granularity as you and your entire supply chain needs, develop system structures and hierarchies which minimise duplication and bloat... You can read the report on the group's activity to date here.
There aren't any easy answers, though. There is cost - and maybe no quantifiable ROI - attached to all these developments, and time is not on our side.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
NEW TRENDS - OR SAME OLD...
We held our summer seminar - a new tradition, only started last year - on Tuesday afternoon at RIBA, with ominous thunder rumbling around. But it turned out to be a thoroughly pleasant and instructive afternoon; or so those who have commented have told me. It's a less formal event than most of our seminars, almost entirely confined to the BIC community itself, which provides a chance to catch up on a range of issues with which BIC is currently involved. Not a digital seminar, either - too many of those these days - but digital and the change digital is bringing to our industry inevitably loomed large.
The seminar was kicked off with a thought-provoking keynote by Sheila Bounford, now MD of NBN International and previously executive director of the IPG. She has very helpfully blogged her assessment of the seminar, saving me the trouble of doing so and at the same time making many of the points I tried to raise in my summing up at the end of the afternoon but in a more robust and succinct way than I could possibly do. You can read it here.
The seminar presentations will be posted next Monday here.
The seminar was kicked off with a thought-provoking keynote by Sheila Bounford, now MD of NBN International and previously executive director of the IPG. She has very helpfully blogged her assessment of the seminar, saving me the trouble of doing so and at the same time making many of the points I tried to raise in my summing up at the end of the afternoon but in a more robust and succinct way than I could possibly do. You can read it here.
The seminar presentations will be posted next Monday here.
Friday, June 10, 2011
AT LAST: A SALES REPORT MESSAGE
Considering the urgency with which the Book Industry Study Group responded in the spring of last year to publishers' need for a standard sales report message in order to perform their legal and financial obligations under the agency model, it is worrying that the resulting standard has taken until today to be published. We must make sure that the momentum has not been lost.
How distributors would deal with invoicing digital products which had already been sold was an issue which first hit BIC's radar back in 2008. It was soon established that a great deal of manual intervention - and therefore cost - was involved in interpreting reports from resellers which arrived in a variety of shapes and sizes and at unpredictable intervals. The number of digital products sold at that time was tiny, but even then it was clear that a significant increase in volumes - on which the drive for digitisation was predicated - would make the situation unmanageable. We looked at an EDItX Digital Sales Report message which had been devised for a particular North American requirement in 2003 which seemed to fit the bill.
Although we continued to promote the need for a standard, the coming of the agency model in the US both provided a real impetus for adoption but also required that we wait for it to be completed. Now, at last, it is; and we believe it is an important step forward for the digital supply chain.
How distributors would deal with invoicing digital products which had already been sold was an issue which first hit BIC's radar back in 2008. It was soon established that a great deal of manual intervention - and therefore cost - was involved in interpreting reports from resellers which arrived in a variety of shapes and sizes and at unpredictable intervals. The number of digital products sold at that time was tiny, but even then it was clear that a significant increase in volumes - on which the drive for digitisation was predicated - would make the situation unmanageable. We looked at an EDItX Digital Sales Report message which had been devised for a particular North American requirement in 2003 which seemed to fit the bill.
Although we continued to promote the need for a standard, the coming of the agency model in the US both provided a real impetus for adoption but also required that we wait for it to be completed. Now, at last, it is; and we believe it is an important step forward for the digital supply chain.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
ALL CHANGE AGAIN AT BISG
We have been saddened by the recent unexpected news that Scott Lubeck, Executive Director of the Book Industry Study Group, has resigned after just eighteen months in the position. Scott has been a valuable ally and friend of BIC's; and although the US and UK book trades do not always see eye to eye - certainly operate in very different ways - he has always shown respect for our views and helped to interpret them for BISG members (as we have always tried to so for theirs). We shall miss him and wish him well for the future.
What is certain is that a close relationship between BIC and BISG is a top priority for us. As trading becomes increasingly global in nature and heavily dominated by North American companies, what happens in the US directly impacts on us and the way we work. Where we can collaborate we do; and where we can share expertise, standards and processes we must. It is our hope that Scott's successor will share this vision.
What is certain is that a close relationship between BIC and BISG is a top priority for us. As trading becomes increasingly global in nature and heavily dominated by North American companies, what happens in the US directly impacts on us and the way we work. Where we can collaborate we do; and where we can share expertise, standards and processes we must. It is our hope that Scott's successor will share this vision.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
RETURN TO HAPPIER TIMES AT THE BOOK INDUSTRY CONFERENCE
It was as if e-books didn't exist. All the talk at the Book Industry Conference this week was of collaboration between publishers and booksellers in promoting the extraordinary creativity of our business and the possibility of a glorious future for independent booksellers. In an impressive presentation, Oren Teicher of the American Booksellers Association showed clearly that he believes there is. But there was scarcely a mention of Amazon, let alone Google or Apple, not an app in sight; no hint that our last remaining high street chain bookseller was reaching a pivotal point in its history even as the conference took place.
No doubt it was deliberate that this was a digital no-go zone - and maybe none the worse for that - but it's hard to think that delegates leaving the warm cocoon of the conference hall didn't feel a chill wind blowing when they got outside.
No doubt it was deliberate that this was a digital no-go zone - and maybe none the worse for that - but it's hard to think that delegates leaving the warm cocoon of the conference hall didn't feel a chill wind blowing when they got outside.
NEW HOPE FOR GLOBAL CLASSIFICATIONS
It has taken the industry a long time to wake up to the problems it has caused for itself by not standardising subject categories much earlier. It has certainly woken up now!
Our industry here in the UK has benefited tremendously from work done by BIC in the 90s in persuading the data aggregators of the day (Book Data and Whitaker) to adopt a single national scheme to replace their own. The BIC standard subject categories have become one of BIC's greatest success stories (to the extent that for many people in the trade BIC is a synonym for its classification scheme). A number of European countries have come to view this success with envy; and there have been a several variant schemes based on BIC introduced locally around Europe.
It is now clear that the time has come for further consolidation in Europe. Urged on by the Spanish Publishers Association, which decided last year to adopt the BIC scheme, we held a meeting at the LBF of representatives from Italy, Germany and Portugal as well as Spain which will lead later this year to the first publication of a multilingual version of BIC. Since then we have heard that there will be participation from Sweden too.
All this activity reflects the new globalism of the book trade and to some extent the likely impact of e-books on search, discovery and content acquisition. The more standard the tools for discovery are, the better will be the trading opportunities.
So far so good. But the bigger obstacle for English-language publishers lies in the standardised use of BIC here, in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and of the parallel BISAC scheme in North America. Not only are the two schemes deeply entrenched in their home territories but they are also very different in structure, so that mapping from one to the other is next to impossible without losing the clarity and level of detail which give the schemes their purpose.
BIC has been advising UK publishers to assign BISAC as well as BIC codes to their titles; but this is a cumbersome solution and one which is in the long run unsustainable. There is now some light at the end of the tunnel, however - even if the tunnel may still be quite long! The Book Industry Study Group's Governing Council has last week endorsed a proposal to work with BIC to address the standardisation of subject classifications and explore the future needs of the worldwide industry for search and discovery taxonomies. On this agreement we pin our hopes for a global multilingual subject classification scheme.
There will be much to do...
Our industry here in the UK has benefited tremendously from work done by BIC in the 90s in persuading the data aggregators of the day (Book Data and Whitaker) to adopt a single national scheme to replace their own. The BIC standard subject categories have become one of BIC's greatest success stories (to the extent that for many people in the trade BIC is a synonym for its classification scheme). A number of European countries have come to view this success with envy; and there have been a several variant schemes based on BIC introduced locally around Europe.
It is now clear that the time has come for further consolidation in Europe. Urged on by the Spanish Publishers Association, which decided last year to adopt the BIC scheme, we held a meeting at the LBF of representatives from Italy, Germany and Portugal as well as Spain which will lead later this year to the first publication of a multilingual version of BIC. Since then we have heard that there will be participation from Sweden too.
All this activity reflects the new globalism of the book trade and to some extent the likely impact of e-books on search, discovery and content acquisition. The more standard the tools for discovery are, the better will be the trading opportunities.
So far so good. But the bigger obstacle for English-language publishers lies in the standardised use of BIC here, in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and of the parallel BISAC scheme in North America. Not only are the two schemes deeply entrenched in their home territories but they are also very different in structure, so that mapping from one to the other is next to impossible without losing the clarity and level of detail which give the schemes their purpose.
BIC has been advising UK publishers to assign BISAC as well as BIC codes to their titles; but this is a cumbersome solution and one which is in the long run unsustainable. There is now some light at the end of the tunnel, however - even if the tunnel may still be quite long! The Book Industry Study Group's Governing Council has last week endorsed a proposal to work with BIC to address the standardisation of subject classifications and explore the future needs of the worldwide industry for search and discovery taxonomies. On this agreement we pin our hopes for a global multilingual subject classification scheme.
There will be much to do...
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