Global information and media group Nielsen, US, has announced initial findings of research into the effectiveness of high quality and appropriate metadata on the sales of books.
Nielsen's Metadata Research seeks to leverage its bibliographic data and Nielsen BookScan sales data to look at three aspects of the impact of metadata on book sales. The first is - how well populated was the enhanced metadata of the UK's bestselling 100,000 titles of 2010? The second is - which field of enhanced metadata had the greatest impact on those sales? Thirdly, Nielsen analysed the difference in sales before and after enhanced metadata is added to title records. The work was undertaken by Andre Breedt and David Walter of Nielsen BookScan.
One finding points to a 42 percent sales increase in some backlist titles driven by enhanced metadata.
The next steps in Nielsen's research programme are to look at the impact of metadata on sales by genre and by format. Once complete, Nielsen will publish a white paper and a summary of these findings will be presented at the Digital Book World in New York in January. Jonathan Nowell, President of Nielsen's book information businesses, is speaking at the event.
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