Bowker

What does it mean when a city of 230,000 loses its lone bookstore, as is happening to Laredo, Texas, in early 2010? With a world of books available to purchase online, is it merely a symbolic loss, or is there something more deep-rooted at work?

U.S. ISBN agency Bowker has announced the publication of a new report providing insights into who is buying books and what motivates them to buy. "2008 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Report" is based on data from Bowker's PubTrack Consumer and includes book data, demographics, psychographics, genre-category breakdowns and distribution channel analysis, according to Bowker. The report also includes first-quarter 2009 trends, documenting that mass-merchandisers picked up market share while bookstores had the largest decline.*

This week, Bowker released 2008 U.S. book publishing statistics, compiled from its Books In Print database. Based on preliminary figures from U.S. publishers, Bowker projects that U.S. title output in 2008 decreased by 3.2 percent, with 275,232 new titles and editions, down from the 284,370 that were published in 2007.

Cambridge Information Group (CIG), parent company to Bowker and ProQuest, has made an equity investment in LibraryThing (www.LibraryThing.com), an online book-cataloging service and social-networking site. Under the terms of the agreement, CIG purchased a minority stake in LibraryThing, and also has designated Bowker as the exclusive worldwide distributor of LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL). LTFL is LibraryThing’s flagship library product, which puts tags, recommendations and reviews directly into a library's catalog.

Chris Anderson’s ironic farewell to the retail bookshelf is a harbinger of how direct distribution in the supply chain is bypassing the traditional foundations of bookselling—as well as library patronage­—and is also flowing into nonprint formats. But while that transformation is nibbling around the edges of distribution, the fact remains that the book publishing industry’s supply chain model has as its primary target a physical book on a physical bookshelf. In this special two-part series, I want to discuss how digital data management drives workflow through the operations, acquisitions, development, production and distribution supply chain; in particular, how use of the Online Information Exchange

Ever since the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) hit upon the theme of “Making Information Pay” for its annual spring event several years ago, it has been filling the room with industry analysts and marketing and business development executives eager for new insights into the mysteries of our industry’s operation, well-being and future. The attendees are generally more interested, I think, in road signs pointing to where we’re going than in measures of where we are—more acutely aware that, in some ways, the information camera may not focus as well on today’s industry snapshots. Useful and reliable industry information always has been hard to

If distribution means getting books into the hands of sellers, circulators or readers, then a true profile of the distribution business would cast a wide net, beginning at the binding line and continuing through to the ‘long tail’ of online portals, used bookstores and curbside pushcarts. However, if distribution, from the publisher’s view, means getting books to generate sales revenue, we can overlook all of the aftermarket, recirculation and reselling channels and focus solely on reaching stores, libraries, online and catalog warehouses and—increasingly, thanks to the Internet—direct marketing from the publisher to the consumer. In the article “Deconstructing Distribution,” in Book Business’

Online independent-publishing marketplace Lulu.com and R.R. Bowker, the U.S. International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) agency, have partnered to provide Lulu.com users with the opportunity to purchase ISBNs for their self-published books. This is the first time that New Providence, N.J.-based Bowker, the sole distributor of ISBNs in the United States, has partnered with a company to offer individual ISBNs. These 13-digit, bar-coded numbers are used by publishers and retailers to facilitate the sale and distribution of books. Lulu.com, with headquarters in Morrisville, N.C., is offering the ISBNs for $50 per number through its “Published By You” distribution service, which allows authors to publish

The large New York publishing firms might have been forgiven, in early 2000, for taking little or no notice of a slim volume of Bible commentary put out by Multnomah Publishers, a small religious publishing house based in Colorado Springs. The book, which analyzed an obscure Old Testament passage as a sort of self-help guide to releasing “God’s favor, power and protection” through prayer, was bought up by large evangelical churches and began to be talked about online and in so-called “small group ministry” sessions around the country. One year and 4 million copies later, everyone in the publishing world had heard of

The recent collapse of San Diego-based wholesaler Advanced Marketing Services (AMS), and its distribution subsidiary that it took down with it—the much esteemed Publishers Group West (PGW) that it acquired only five years ago—reminded me of the remarkable way in which our industry sorts through 180,000 new titles a year and the millions more in print. Somehow, in a timely manner, the industry moves books into stores, superstores, specialty stores and gift shops, big-box discounters, grocery and drug store chains, and libraries of all kinds—aggregating more than 100,000 accounts that someone has to bill and collect on. Dramatic though the PGW collapse is, drilling