BookNet Canada, a non-profit industry organization which tracks book sales in Canada, launched its new online cataloging service, BNC CataList, on March 31.
Although Canadian publishers already have access to competitors such as Edelweiss, BookNet Canada’s project manager for CataList, Carol Gordon, says that this system was designed with the Canadian market in mind. “The publishers came to us and said that they needed a solution that was better than PDF and less expensive, so our mandate was to find something that would work well for the Canadian market and would be sized and priced for Canadian publishers.”
Gordon said that CataList charges a yearly subscription fee for a base of 10 ISBNs and then an additional fee per each additional ISBN. “So if you are a small publisher and you have less than 10 [titles], it’s just your subscription fee,” said Gordon.
Vancouver-based D&M Publishers and Scholastic Canada are the first publishers to start using the service, but Gordon says many more are testing it out with demo accounts.
One of the system’s best features is that it is easy for publishers to create their catalogues, Gordon said. Pages can be created with ONIX data that most publishers already use. From there, elements such as videos for book trailers can be added and catalogues can be customized for each particular account using only the relevant pages. “It’s quite quick,” she added. “We’ve done testing on iPads. We think that’s probably what a lot of the reps are going to be using if they are going out to accounts, so it is quite easy to navigate through catalogues.”
Gordon said that retailers can easily manage their orders directly in the catalogue and then export them. And because BookNet tracks sales data, publishers who subscribe to that service can include sales figures for comparable titles, such as other books by the same author.
Sales reps and retailers can make private or shareable notes on the pages.
Gordon said the response so far from publishers and retailers has been positive. “I won’t say everyone loves the idea of an e-catalogue, but they know that it is coming and at least they’ve had some input into the creation of this one,” she said.
