The Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group are teaming up to develop new data-gathering models aimed at creating better statistics to measure sales for the entire book publishing industry as well as different market segments. For many years, the two organizations have developed their own statistics that tended to show different sales and growth rates. The new program will produce a unified, and hopefully, more accurate sales estimate.
To implement the new program, AAP and BISG have retained Management Practices, Inc. to develop a prototype data model. MPI has served AAP as its third party data collection and aggregation service provider. A committee of representatives of AAP and BISG members is overseeing the process. The two organizations are encouraging participation from all industry sectors and over the next three months will be contacting their members to determine how to maximize the usefulness and accuracy of data about the industry.
BISG and AAP said that by January 2011, they hope to have a mechanism in place for providing a uniform industry estimate with a revitalized methodology. Once this mechanism is in place, "jointly agreed upon numbers for 2010 can be released during the first quarter of 2011 that will dramatically improve our capacity to estimate the size of market sectors and the industry as a whole," the parties said in a statement.
