Book Industry Study Group Research Articles

Making Book Rights, Right

In 2017, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), a U.S.-based trade association dedicated to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the book industry supply chain, published Publishing Rights: An Untapped Opportunity. The white paper outlined six findings from an industry survey. Since then, BISG’s rights committee extended that initial research by updating a draft taxonomy for rights transactions. The new taxonomy defines rights data, transactions requests, transactions licenses, and royalty data. The taxonomy is being tested now in a set of pilot agreements between trading partners. Benefits of the proposed taxonomy are expected to include lower transaction costs, fewer errors in rights tracking and sale, and improved turnaround times for rights inquiries. Information about the work may be obtained by writing to info@bisg.org.

Publishing Rights: An Untapped Opportunity

Through its Rights Committee, the Book Industry Study Group develops, maintains and advocates for industry-wide best practices designed to support the transmission of a defined set of rights information between trading partners. A survey recently identified six challenges related to rights management. It further found that publishers and other stakeholders are looking to justify the return on investment in solutions offered by rights solutions providers.

Best Practices for Best Practices: The Story Behind the BISG Best Practices for Identifying Digital Product

On December 7, 2011, the Book Industry Study Group released BISG Policy Statement POL-1101, Best Practices for Identifying Digital Products, capping an 18-month project by a working group of the BISG Identification Committee. This article chronicles how a diverse group of industry professionals, from every sector of the supply chain, came together to deal with an issue that had polarized the industry since 2005. Based on a presentation made by the author at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Book Industry Study Group, this article delves further into the history and the methodology behind the drafting of the Policy Statement.

The Challenges of Higher Education Digital Publishing

The current generation of students uses computers, tablets, dedicated e-readers, and smart phones more than any previous student group. Student adoption of Web apps, social media of all kinds, computer games, as well as learning and desktop software is remarkably high making them not just computer literate but often digital experts. However, although they spend a great deal of time using the latest digital devices, 75% of students surveyed still prefer the traditional printed textbook over a digital counterpart, according to the ongoing research project Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education from the Book Industry Study Group (BISG). The data indicate that the current print value proposition is not meeting the needs of students. In particular, the price/value relationship is not sufficient to justify required adoptions or to preclude students seeking alternative methods for obtaining their content and pedagogy. Next-generation digital learning products have tremendous potential to offer students individualized solutions to their learning challenges enabling them to reduce their study time and to improve their grades. Their levels of customizability and interactivity are appealing to both students and instructors.

Copyright, E-books and the Unpredictable Future

The shift to e-books and digital publishing is challenging the basic models of copyright and contracts that underlie the functioning of book publishing—a mature business with 500 years of history—making it hard to predict what shape the business will take in the years to come. This article looks at two of those challenges: first, the tension between a fast-changing technological marketplace and the standard book contract that locks in book rights for life of copyright; and second, the specific complications presented by image rights. There are, however, first steps being taken to allow books to make the transition to the digital marketplace with all their rights information intact and easily accessible, facilitating future transactions between agents, publishers, and new trading partners. The final section looks at the work begun by the Book Industry Study Group to create a standardized rights framework for this purpose.

Book Industry Study Group, Inc., ed. Including Contributors: Digital Book Printing for Dummies

Book Industry Study Group, Inc., ed. Including Contributors: Digital Book Printing for Dummies

Shifting Sales Channels

The Book Industry Study Group and The Idea Logical Company carried out an online survey to capture publishers’ comments on how market conditions were changing and what they are doing differently as a result of the economic pressures in the consumer market. About 250 individuals responded to the online survey. Interviews were carried out of more than a dozen executives at large and small publishers and their accounts to get further insights. The goal was to identify what are the sales conditions for trade book publishers today and what publishers are doing to change sales and marketing and even editorial practices to accommodate changing times. What we have learned from that joint effort is reflected in this article.

Experimentation and Innovation in U.S. Publishing Today: Findings from the Book Industry Study Group

In February 2008 the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) conducted a survey of U.S. publishers to determine the extent of technology-driven innovation and experimentation. The survey findings were published alongside a set of 10 case studies in May 2008 as “From experimentation to innovation in the digital age—case studies from the North American Book Industry 2008”. This article, written by Michael Healy, Executive Director of the BISG, summarizes the circumstances that led to the survey and shares the key findings.

Beyond the Flickering Screen: Re-situating e-books

Beyond the Flickering Screen: Re-situating e-books

The Book Industry Study Group, Inc., Book Industry Trends 2006: Comprehensive Coverage of Book Sales by Publishers, Including Dollar and Unit Sales Figures for the Years 2004–2010 and Insights from Interviews with Leaders in Major Sectors of the Book Publishing Industry

The Book Industry Study Group, Inc., Book Industry Trends 2006: Comprehensive Coverage of Book Sales by Publishers, Including Dollar and Unit Sales Figures for the Years 2004–2010 and Insights from Interviews with Leaders in Major Sectors of the Book Publishing Industry

Metadata for e‐commerce: the ONIX International standard

The Online Information Exchange (ONIX) international standard is a collaborative project aimed at developing descriptive and administrative metadata for books. ONIX was first published in January 2000, and was a result of funding from the Association of American Publishers. It was conceived in order to provide Internet booksellers with rich, standardized data that could promote e‐commerce. The metadata initiative is currently in release 1.2, dated November 24, 2000, and is maintained cooperatively by three bodies: EDItEUR, an international group, which coordinates standards for electronic commerce; the Book Industry Communication, a London‐based organization charged with exploring electronic data interchange; and the Book Industry Study Group (http://www.bisg.org/), a non‐profit association stationed in New York, which develops technical standards for the book world.

AAP-BISG book industry data

Book publishing is a relatively small and extremely volatile industry. For this reason, it is difficult to collect data and formulate statistics. This article describes the statistics program of the Association of American Publishers and the Trends Program of the Book Industry Study Group, including information on how data are collected, organized, and published. Measures taken to ensure confidentiality are also described.

The SISAC bar code symbol

SISAC, the Serials Industry Systems Advisory Committee, was formed in 1982 as a committee of the Book Industry Study Group and a counterpart to BISAC, the Book Industry Systems Advisory Committee, formed in 1974. SISAC's purpose is to develop and promote voluntary standardized formats for the electronic transmission of serial information and, where appropriate, to present them to the National Information Standards Organization (NIS(9) for adoption as American National Standards. The term encompasses all parties involved in the provision and dissemination of serials information, including publishers, libraries, subscription agents, wholesalers, and integrated library system vendors. All components of the industry share a common interest in and need for rapid, economical communication of information.

Book Distribution: Part 2

In my last column in Collection Building, I was concerned with an article that appeared in a 1982 issue of Publishers Weekly which dealt with the ways book publishers are attempting to deal with economic hard times. I commented that all the nickel‐and‐dime belt‐tightening measures outlined in the article ignored one of the most serious and costly aspects of the publishing business: the entire process of book distribution, the improvement of which The Book Industry Study Group called “an essential ingredient for the [book] industry's future growth,” in its 1982 report Book Distribution in the United States: Issues and Perceptions. But just how seriously the book industry takes one of its own most critical problems was brought out in the Publishers Weekly Yearbook: News, Analyses, and Trends in the Book Industry (Bowker, 1983), a volume summarizing the year's activity in the book business. Book distribution is mentioned just once, on page two, where the book's editor, John F. Baker, says that “the traditional patterns in which books were manufactured, distributed, and sold [were] rapidly changing.” No further discussion of how these distribution patterns were “rapidly changing” can be found, and from the viewpoint of one who has to deal daily with the distribution problem, I can only wonder what “rapid” changes Mr. Baker refers to—or even what non‐rapid changes have occurred since the Book Industry Study Group's 1982 report, which concluded emphatically, that “of all industry segments, publishers' practices would need to change most to achieve significant distribution improvements.”

Literature in Crisis

Edmund J. Farrell Those attuned to publishers' annual reports to stockholders, to bottom-line figures (where the buck really stops these days), might sense media hype in my title. No one can deny that books are presently selling well. In its issue of May 30, 1980, Publishers Weekly reported (1) that book sales in 1979 totaled $6.3 billion, an increase of 9.3 percent over sales in 1978, and (2) that, based on its sample survey of more than six hundred bookstores throughout the country, the U.S. Census estimates that sales increased twenty percent in January 1980 over January 1979, an increase larger than that reported for any month in 1979. The Book Industry Study Group, supported by major publishers and others concerned with what we read, forecasts a whopping increase in book purchases in the next three years, with sales totaling $11.2 billion in 1983. Rosy figures, indeed. But books are not synonymous with literature. When one examines what books are selling, figures quickly lose their roseate luster and take on a slightly tawdry sheen. In The New York Times Book Review, December 30, 1979, Roy Walters announced that when hardback and paperback sales were combined, the five best sellers for fiction in the 1970s were The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Love Story, and Jaws. Those for nonfiction were initially reported to be The Late Great Planet Earth, Chariot of the Gods, Your Erroneous Zones, The Joy of Sex, and Future Shock. The list was revised on February 3, 1980, however, when combined sales showed that The Sensuous Woman had earned the