Fordham University

BISG Unveils Powerful New Bookstats Features
September 4, 2012

“Awesome,” should be the headline to describe the features and analytical power of the new AAP/BISG sponsored Bookstats report on industry sales and trends, for which the analytical work is managed by Bowker. It is especially so when one looks back on the decades during which BISG struggled with data gathering and data analysis tools that were short of the task—resting on a lot of intuitive extrapolation; and the AAP contented itself with industry reporting that used actual returns from participating publishers and no extrapolations; and neither included most of the emerging vast universe of independent publishers. And publishers had two sets of figures to work with.

Publishers slow library e-books
January 17, 2012

U.S. libraries are struggling to get up to speed with the new way of reading books -- in digital format on e-readers, librarians and others say.

The Washington Post
reported Saturday that in Maryland, for example, the state's libraries doubled their total of copyright e-books available to fewer than 10,000 titles in the past two years, while the number of e-book checkouts statewide nearly quadrupled to 266,000. The District of Columbia library system witnessed the number of people using their Kindles, Nooks and iPads to download books grow 116 percent from 2010 to 2011, the newspaper said

SPECIAL REPORT: Embracing the ‘Kindle Effect’
January 1, 2008

2007 might well be remembered as the year when, a few months after the final installment of “Harry Potter” hit the shelves to blockbuster acclaim, the “To Read or Not to Read” report was issued by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The report raised serious concerns about the future of reading in this country: Amount and proficiency are on the decline, the report found, especially among young adults and older teens. Then, there are new U.S. Census numbers, released in December 2007, that show that the number of hours per person spent reading consumer books has been basically flat over the

Industry Statistics: Looking Behind the Numbers
October 1, 2007

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