Make sure your samples, excerpts, and reading guides are available for retailers, reviewers, and Loan Stars by sending them to BiblioShare for display on sites like BNC CataList. How? BookNet Canada project managers Tim Middleton and Carol Gordon provide a step-by-step walkthrough that covers: how to provide this content to BiblioShare; when you should be making them available to best support marketing campaigns, retailer requests, and Loan Stars recommending; and how they will be displayed in CataList.
BNC Webinar: Getting Your Samples and Excerpts Into the Supply Chain
1. June 4, 2019
Getting Your Samples & Excerpts
Into the Supply Chain
Tim Middleton ̶ BiblioShare Project Manager
Carol Gordon ̶ CataList Project Manager
8. "The purpose of an effective sample is to make people think, “Wow – this sample is so good, I
wonder how much more value I’ll get if I buy the product.” Rob Eagar, Wildfire Marketing
• posting the first chapter is insufficient. For most books, especially non-fiction,
• the first chapter usually describes the problem that the book was written to address.
• The author’s specific solutions are delivered in the later chapters.
• If a book’s sample is limited to just the first chapter, consumers don’t get to see the wisdom of the author’s material.
Go a step further. Select a large chunk of the best material from the middle of a book.
Give 1,000 – 3,000 words of content away for free in addition to the sample chapter.
14. The files and naming conventions that we are currently accepting are:
978XXXXXXXXXX_sample.pdf (or .epub)
978XXXXXXXXXX_sample_2.pdf
(numbering if there's a reason to have multiple samples for a title.)
978XXXXXXXXXX.pdf
(no underscore will be assumed to be a sample if it is in the sample
directory.)
978XXXXXXXXXX_excerpt.pdf
978XXXXXXXXXX_toc.pdf
978XXXXXXXXXX_guide.pdf
15. Samples and Excerpts
textlinktype code: where Other textlinktype code = 01 (URL)
and Other Text format code = (04 pdf, 08 pdf, 14 epub)
{
Other TextTypeCode:23 | excerpt
Other TextTypeCode:24 | Sample
Other TextTypeCode:33 | Sample
(if more then one sample for unique EAN then increment sample_0, sample_1, ...)
Other TextTypeCode:41 | Readers Guide
}
then if text format in (04, 08) then append .pdf else text format = 14 append .epub
16. Known Issues
• hard to remember naming protocols
• easy to overwrite existing files with bad name
• not easy to correct for a misapplied type
• not very granular access control
18. Samples and Excerpts
• Interior Images: 181,977
• Author Images: 4,836
• ISBNs with Sample type: 378
• ISBNs with Excerpt type: 10,425
• ISBNs with TOC type: 19
• ISBNs with Guide type: 210
19. How to Get Samples and Excerpts
Samples?token=string&ean=string&san=string&perspective=string&filenumber=
https://www.biblioshare.ca/BNCservices/BNCServices.asmx/
Structure for http request:
20.
21. CataList will also pick up excerpts,
TOCs and reading group guides
from ONIX files
22. Content Type ONIX 2.1 details
Table of contents <OtherText> type code '04'
Excerpt <OtherText> type code ‘23'
Reading Group Guide <OtherText> type code ‘41'
Submit supplemental content in ONIX (2.1)
Over 75,000 title listings in CataList already have additional content
pulled from these fields
23. ← Type code ‘41’ = reading group guide
← Text format code ‘02’ = HTML
Standards documentation > HTML use in ONIX: https://bit.ly/2JtRdES
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Intro to BiblioShare and CataList.
If you aren’t already a user of these systems:
Who can use the products
How to get access
About 2 years ago BiblioShare began to accept and process and provide into the supply chain Sample files.
We saw this as a need since from our consumer survey data we saw that Samples help consumers with their buying decisions. In a survey we fielded in 2017 we asked consumers who bought a book through these channels what influenced their decision to buy the book. We included choices like – it:
Contained information needed
Description of the book
Front cover caught attention/appealed
Won/been nominated for book prize
And it’s not surprising that 38% of consumers who purchased their book online said ”They read a sample or an excerpt” before deciding to buy the book.
For consumers of fiction 8.4% of our surveyed panel said they had downloaded a sample before purchasing the title.
And when we drilled into the data we started seeing which genres get a boost when a sample is downloaded.
Nonfiction consumers are a little less likely to need a sample to influence their purchase.
#but there are still categories
That saw a big bump in conversion - if you publish books on mathematics know this – they love their samples!
What is an effective sample:
In the digital space Samples and Excerpts should be thought of as key information that can influence a decision
Without samples the lack of information creates a guessing game for reader.
They feel uncertain if the book will be satisfying, so they remain on the fence.
Allow consumers to experience enough of the book’s best attributes to help close the sale.
(Back to Carol)
Two quotes from our Customer Satisfaction survey.
Two quotes from our Customer Satisfaction survey.
Talking points:
About Loan Stars and voting
We link to NetGalley and offer an ARC request tool, but not every title can have an ARC or egalley
Excerpts and TOCs allow librarians to preview your titles right in CataList where they can then vote for their top recommended titles for Canadian libraries
As early in the process as possible.
National accounts are buying 6 months or more in advance of publication
Loan Stars librarians are voting on titles more than 2 months ahead of publication date
Content like Reading Group Guides can help inform buyers and merchandisers of book club promotable titles
we started requesting and accepting Samples and other support material like guides and excerpts for ingestion into and delivery from BiblioShare in 2017.
industry partners have asked us for it, and partly because we know from
#our Consumer survey
We are currently accepting both epub and pdf formats for samples and excerpts
And we will also accept table of contents as well as readers guides.
we will also pull down samples and excerpts from external web addresses: If there is markup in the ONIX record that points us to this content and we haven’t received
the content separately in the ftp directory then we will pull the data down.
Codelist 33
The known issues of the BiblioShare implementation to date:
Can be hard to remember naming protocols.
Easy to overwrite existing images with bad name issues.
Cannot easily correct for a misapplied type.
No "private" directory.
BiblioShare works with the concept of type. Currently we just overwrite images when there is a change. The way we recognize a change is based on filesize.
There is no automatic mechanism to remove or replace images other then through loading another image or requesting that our team remove it.
We can manually correct issues but that approach isn't really scalable.
In the interim between a new way to load and manage images and other files we have created a new directory structure for uploading samples and excerpts.
We added these nested directories to help with some of the issues we were seeing in naming of files
Token = Your user token
EAN = The item you are looking for a sample of. Without hyphens. 13 digits, likely starting with 978, or perhaps 979.
SAN = The SAN of the supplier. Note: In almost all cases this should be left empty. If this is the case, remove "string" so it reads ...&san=&perspective=
Perspective = Sample, Excerpt, TOC or Guide. This indicates the type of sample you are pulling down.
FileNumber = integer. This will pull back the sequence number of the sample if there is more then one.
As early in the process as possible.
National accounts are buying 6 months or more in advance of publication
Loan Stars librarians are voting on titles more than 2 months ahead of publication date
Content like Reading Group Guides can help inform buyers and merchandisers of book club promotable titles
<OtherText> composite is where your book descriptions, headline statements, reviews and endorsements are communicated – and the Type Code is what identifies the type of content you’re sending.
Difference between a sample and an excerpt
A sample could be more visual, or less strictly one of these types
You cannot label a “sample” using ONIX
Simply identify the type using the text type code, in this case code 41 indicates a reading group guide, and the format code indicated HTML. So yes - you can use some basic HTML to format paragraphs and line breaks, use bold or italic text, and add ordered or unordered lists.
If you want a quick reference for which HTML tags are appropriate for use in ONIX you can reference the handy guide at the link at the bottom.
You can include an intro line, or copyright statements as appropriate.
Access buttons in CataList are displayed on the title detail page and the scroll view – any available content types will display a button. We do limit excerpt and sample display to system users who are logged in as a trade-type account, but tables of contents and reading group guides are available to any site visitors.
Content displays in catalogue context, using the viewer’s browser PDF reader or an open-source epub reader, allowing access without leaving the page.
Note that other BiblioShare clients can also request to pick up sample file content from BiblioShare, so again I’d recommend including copyright statements or watermarks in your provided files as needed.