Big Data for Publishers - Bookwire Launches ‘Enhanced Analytics’

Frankfurt, 10 October 2016 - knowledge about readership, reader behaviour and reader preferences has enormous potential for optimising publishers’ sales figures. When it comes to the ‘big data’ trend, the book industry is no different from any other ecommerce sector, but data collection and analysis beyond pure sales figures have been difficult until now. Frankfurt digital services provider Bookwire is fundamentally changing this with the ‘enhanced analytics’ tool.

The groundbreaking software tool is integrated into the company’s own ‘Bookwire MACS’ distribution platform and will be presented to industry specialists for the first time, at Frankfurt Book Fair. The tool combines great depth of data with user-friendliness.

‘Enhanced analytics’ adds a wide variety of additional data to basic statistics from sales figures for individual titles that have already been imported. This additional data is hugely important and gives publishers entirely new insights into the readers of their eBook titles. To this end, Bookwire is also working together closely with eBook platforms readfy and Skoobe, whose detailed reader analyses are an important element of data generation.

‘Enhanced analytics’ data categories:                                                                       

•Gender statistics: proportion of male and female readers of a title

•Demography: average age of readers of a title

•Conversion rate: percentage of readers who read more than 10% (sample) of a title

•Progress: average number of pages read

•Ranking: number and tone of reviews

•Comparative data: title in comparison with the publisher’s catalogue and the genre of all general titles

•Genre analysis: how the title ranks in a market comparison within the genre

•Reach analysis: evaluation of the success of in-book promotions

Assessment of marketing campaigns: how successful are marketing activities?

A special benefit for publishers is that data collection is fully anonymised. The data collected is automatically combined from the various categories by ‘enhanced analytics’, compared and presented (see example diagram).

“When we were developing ‘enhanced analytics’, we focused on simple generation of important findings for our publishing house. The data collected is put into context and presented clearly and comprehensively so that publishers can literally understand it at a glance, draw their conclusions from it and then adapt their publishing strategy to the right target audience for a title”, says Jens Klingelhöfer, manager of Bookwire GmbH, on the service potential of the tool for the 1,000-plus publishers that are currently looked after by Bookwire.

Data generation for ‘enhanced analytics’

In order to obtain the necessary quantity of different data, Bookwire used a combination of different generation channels when redeveloping the tool:

• Reader analytics: monthly, anonymised data provision from all users of flat-rate eBook providers readfy and Skoobe

• In-book promotion analytics: analysis and evaluation of reader interactions with various in-book promotions

• Marketing analytics: evaluation of the latest marketing activities for a title

Combining this data creates a ‘big data’ pool that far exceeds current pure analysis using sales figures or surveys of sample reader groups.

Further development of ‘enhanced analytics’

“It is no longer possible to imagine the ecommerce sector without data analysis as a tool for making sales-boosting decisions. This is the reality for publishers too. With ‘enhanced analytics’, we provide them with a tool for exploiting this potential for themselves, because, along with classic core competences such as building up authors, curating and marketing campaigns for the catalogue, one thing is crucial for a publisher’s economic success: the reader. The more a publisher knows who its readers are and what they want, the more books it can sell,” says Klingelhöfer about the significance of data analysis. Bookwire will continue to develop data analysis following the launch of ‘enhanced analytics’ and depth of data will continue to increase.

Bookwire at Frankfurt Book Fair - Hall 4.0, E25.