What's Involved in Being a Contributing Retailer

Owned by Zalina Alvi (Unlicensed)
Last updated: May 24, 2017
1 min read

SalesData's retailer panel is made up of large and small retailers across the country who report their transaction-level print book sales on a weekly basis. So what's involved in contributing to the panel? All reporting retailers must be able to meet the following requirements in order to contribute data:

  • A POS system is required. SalesData only accepts transaction-level data from a point-of-sale (POS) system (e.g., Wordstock, Bookmanager, Shopify, etc.).
  • Files must be submitted using an approved format. SalesData accepts CSV files that include the following columns: ISBN, Volume Sold, On Hand, On Order, Number of Stores Selling, and Actual Selling Price.
  • Weekly sales must be reported every week by Monday. SalesData can only onboard new retailers who are able to submit weekly sales on a continuing and reliable basis. "One-off" reporting engagements are not feasible and these sales will not be counted towards media bestseller lists.

In addition to these basic requirements, there are also further guidelines in place regarding access to SalesData and processing of data:

  • Retailers will only be granted access to SalesData if they:
    • are reporting sales for more than one book — if sales are only being reported for a single ISBN, it will be up to the publisher to share sales for that particular title with the retailer, upon request.
    • are a majority-book retailer — only retailers whose stock comprises of a majority of books will be able to access SalesData's reporting features.
  • SalesData cannot process historical data. Weekly sales reports will be processed and aggregated in the system starting from when the retailer is added to the reporting panel. Historical data cannot be processed retroactively.