Previous Updates

September 2020

Dewey Numbers, Dewey Numbers, Dewey Numbers!

You want ‘em, we’ve got 'em! You can now add a Dewey Number bibliographic data column to any title-level data report in SalesData and LibraryData, including:

  • Bestseller Report

  • Multi-ISBN Report

  • Gap Analysis Report

  • Popular Books Report

  • Collection Gaps Report

  • Bestseller Circ Report

To add a Dewey Number column, open the Customize Columns dialog in any report results screen, and check the checkbox to add it!

In the Popular Books report you can now add a column showing the % change in holds between the report week and the prior week – handy for seeing titles with a huge surge in reader demand!

Now when you download or email a Popular Books report, a column showing the ISBNs present in each ISBN cluster appears in the Excel grid. ISBNs for everyone!

Multi-ISBN Report Improvements

In Multi ISBN reports with multi-week reporting periods, you can now see the On Hand information for the most recent week in the selected period.

Bestseller Report - Downloaded Report Filenames

When you download a bestseller report from SalesData.ca, the filename now includes either: the week-ending date of the selected reporting week or the start and end dates of a multi week period.

Upgrades to downloaded and emailed reports in Excel format.

If you often download reports in Excel format - great news! We've made some upgrades to the download format to make Excel exports from SalesData & LibraryData easier to work with. Notably:

  • Blank cells will properly register as "Blanks" when using tools like Find > Go to Special > Blanks

  • Numerical columns are formatted as numbers, and can be automatically summed, averaged, and counted in Excel's bottom toolbar. 

If you use any pre-saved macros, you may want to check that they will still work with these changes. 

My Reports: More Clarity about the Saved and Scheduled Status of your reports

The My Reports page now includes additional information about your saved reports, particularly some additional clarity around whether they have been Shared to any colleagues or are set as part of a Scheduled Email.

  • If a report IS shared or scheduled, you will see "View/Edit" in the "Share Report" and "Schedule Email" columns.

  • If a report IS NOT shared or scheduled, you will see "Share" or "Schedule" in those columns. 

This can help you remember if other colleagues may be receiving or using your reports before you make changes to or delete a saved report. 


July 2020

How to Hard Reset your Browser if the SalesData site isn't loading properly:

We did a feature release on the SalesData site overnight, so there may be a conflict between the version online now and the version in your browser's cache that might cause some issues.

Clearing your browser's cache or doing a "hard reload" should solve the issue.

  • On Chrome, you can do a hard reload by opening View > Developer > Developer Tools, and then right-clicking on the reload icon (the circular arrow next to the URL bar) and selecting "Empty Cache and Hard Reload"

  • On Edge: Hold down the Ctrl key and then press your F5 key, or, hold down the Ctrl key and then click the Refresh button.

  • On Firefox: Hold down the Ctrl Key and then press F5, or hold down the Shift key and Ctrl key, and then press the R key.

Need some additional help? Hard reload not solving your issues? Reach out to us at salesdata@booknetcanada.ca and we'd be happy to help!

With that settled - onto the new features!



Scheduled Emailed Reports: New Delivery Frequency

Until now, when you scheduled an emailed report in SalesData & LibraryData, your only option was to receive the report weekly. Now, you can select Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly delivery schedules as well! This feature is available on all SalesData & LibraryData reports.

To set up an scheduled emailed report on the new delivery schedule options, click on the Save/Distribute button on any SalesData or LibraryData report results page. 

From there, fill in your report's Save details (name and reporting period), Share details (if needed), and then, on the Schedule Email settings popup, you'll see the new Frequency selection option. Select your desired delivery schedule, and save your report!

When will my saved reports come?

If you select weekly frequency, you'll continue to receive your report each week when the data goes live.

If you select monthly frequency, you'll receive your report as soon as data for the last week in the month has been released. We use ISO standard month definitions in SalesData & LibraryData and our research reports, like the monthly report. To put it simply - the week containing the last Thursday of a month is the last week of the month. 

If you select quarterly frequency, you'll receive your report as soon as data for the last week in the quarter has been released. 

If you select annual frequency, you'll receive your report as soon as data for the last week in the calendar year has been released. 

My Reports: More info about your beloved saved reports!

The My Reports page now includes additional information about your saved reports, including the Date Modified, highlighting the last date you made changes to the report, and the Delivery Frequency, so you can see which reports you're scheduled to receive weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. 



New Feature Webinar: July 7

A recording of the webinar is available here

February 2020

Over Time: Snapshot Reporting Periods now include Last Year to Date (LYTD)

When you select the “Snapshot” reporting period in the Multi-ISBNMarket Comp, or Market Share report, the results columns in your report now include Last Year to Date alongside the total sales for last year and the previous year, giving the YTD number a useful comparator against the previous year.

Over Time: Year over Year reporting now allows Year-to-Date over Year to Date comparison

When you select the “Year over Year” reporting period in the Multi-ISBNMarket Comp, or Market Share report, you can now compare Year to Date to the same number of weeks in each of the previous 9 years. This is a great tool to evaluate how you’re doing over the course of a year, and how it stacks up against the same time last year!

Top tip: Set up a saved report using the Year To Date Year over Year selection to get a quick update each week!

The Research Portal has had a makeover as well! Now you can see and download our newest research right from the SalesData homepage. 

That’s right! You asked, we answered. At long last, the On Order column is available in the Multi-ISBN report for single-week reporting periods. Paired up with the Searchable Criteria and Rolling Pub Date options, this makes the Multi-ISBN report even more powerful for tracking forthcoming and currently-selling titles.

September 2019

Coming soon: LibraryData!

The SalesData login screen's had a bit of a makeover as we start preparing for the launch of our LibraryData service — don't fret! Your SalesData access and all the reports you know and love, including your saved reports, remain.

You may notice a few other "nods" toward LibraryData throughout the site as we work toward our launch. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at librarydata@booknetcanada.ca for more information. 

Revamped Research Portal

The Research Portal has had a makeover as well! Now you can see and download our newest research right from the SalesData homepage. 

Stock Turn Calculations

The Stock Turn column can be selected in the Bestseller and Gap Analysis reports. After consultations with stakeholders, we've updated the calculation used for Stock Turn. 

The old Stock Turn calculation was: Summed Sold over the selected period / Summed OH over the selected period x 52 weeks

The new Stock Turn calculation is:  Avg. Vol Sold over selected period / most recent OH

Author/Contributor Search: Now with semicolon delimiters!

Now, when you use the Author/Contributor search field in the Bestseller or Multi-ISBN reports, you can paste in a list of multiple contributors, separated by semicolons, to complete the search. 

For example, this list...

Andrew Kaufman; O'Connell, Grace; John Grisham; Atwood, Margaret; Laura Cok

...becomes this, after being pasted into the Author/Contributor search field:

May 2018

Multi-ISBN Report: Searchable Criteria

We've overhauled the "by Title/Series/Subtitle" and "by Author/Contributor" tabs of the Multi-ISBN Report and consolidated them into one robust option: the new Searchable Criteria tab.

The Searchable Criteria tab allows you to select the attributes of the ISBNs you'd like to see in your report. You can specify any of the below criteria, either on its own or in combination with the others:

  • Title/Subtitle/Series

  • Author/Contributor

  • Publisher

  • Imprint

  • Distributor

  • Subject

You can also specify a pub date range for your ISBNs using our pre-canned options, including forthcoming titles, those published in the last 4/13/52 weeks, and any dates, or you can set your own custom pub date range, to further isolate titles in specific spans. 

Using these powerful new criteria options you can target titles from a specific publisher (or group of publishers) in a specific subject that were all published in the same period, and compare their sales over time or by markets, all in one fell swoop. Pretty neat, huh?

Multi-ISBN Report: Rolling Pub Dates in Saved/Scheduled Reports

In the new Multi-ISBN Report, you can harness the power of automation to bring you exactly the ISBNs you're looking for, automatically by email each week when our fresh data goes live. To make these saved reports even more robust, we've added a "rolling" pub date option to the Saved Reports function, so as the weeks move along, the pub dates of the ISBNs contained in that report do too. 

To use the dynamic pub date option, just use the number pickers to set a range that includes a certain number of previous weeks, by using the Most recent X week(s), and a certain number of future weeks, by using the Forthcoming X week(s). In this example, you can see that our pub date filter will capture the past four weeks and the next two weeks. And the following week's emailed report will "roll" those weeks ahead — and so on and so forth.

These dynamic pub dates allow you to set up automatic reports that will track the sales of frontlist and forthcoming titles, without having to return to the Multi-ISBN Report with a list of ISBNs each week. Using the rolling pub date options in conjunction with any of the other searchable criteria, like subject or distributor, allows you to zero in on exactly the ISBNs you want to see.

Additional Bibliographic Data Columns in the Multi-ISBN Report

We've added the below bibliographic data columns to the Multi-ISBN report results - you can now turn these columns on or off using the "Customize Columns" options in your Multi-ISBN report results, along with any of the other results columns available:

  • My Titles

  • Series Vol Number

  • Canadian Author Flag

  • Imprint

  • Distributor

  • Primary Format

  • Original List Price

  • BISAC Code




March 2018

8-week Sales Summaries 

Looking for initial 8 or 13 weeks of sales in SalesData? We've got you covered in both the Single ISBN and Multi-ISBN reports.

In the Single ISBN Week By Week Report, you can now see the 8-week sales summary in your selected market in the "Sales Summary" box right below a title's bibliographic data.

In the Multi-ISBN report, use the "Initial weeks from first sale dates" or "Initial weeks from publication dates" reports, shown here.

In your report results, you will get the first 13 weeks of sale broken out week by week, but also three summary columns: Weeks 1-8, Weeks 1-13, and Weeks 1-52. (These will also include presales if you chose the "Initial weeks from publication dates" option).

Looking for other 8-week figures? 

In nearly every SalesData report (including Bestseller, Single ISBN Multi Market, and Gap Analysis), you can select custom reporting periods, including 8-week spans, using the handy calendar picker. Just select "Custom" from the drop-down menu, and then select your number of weeks. A helpful message appears telling you how many weeks you've selected, just in case you're not sure:

% Sell Through Calculations Change

The calculation used for the % Sell Through figures in SalesData has been modified.

Previously, % Sell Through was calculated using on-hand / units sold for a given period. 

We have updated this to better reflect the marketplace and the data we have available to better account for copies that may have been received and sold during a week period. This change better reflects sell through, especially for new books.

The calculation is now: Units sold in the given period / (On Hand in the given period + Units Sold in the given period)

So, for a book this week that has 10 Units Sold and 50 copies On Hand:

10 / (50+10) = 16% sell through

This calculation is in effect for every report run through the SalesData user interface. Any reports you have had emailed or downloaded in the past will be using the old calculation.

Gap Analysis Inventory Indicators

We recently added asterisk ( * ) indicators to markets in the Gap Analysis reports that indicate whether a market's inventory data is available to you for Gap Analysis reporting.

These asterisks now appear not only in the drop-down market selectors on the criteria page, but also on the results page and in your exported results, to better surface this information for you!

Additional Columns in the Multi-ISBN and Gap Analysis Report Results

In the Multi-ISBN report, "Current List Price" and "Languages" are now among the many bibliographic data column options you can select using the "Customize Columns" option.

In Gap Analysis reporting, "Stores Reporting" is now among your column options, when available for your selected market.

Publisher/Imprint/Distributor list improvements

If you've ever used the Publisher, Imprint or Distributor filters in SalesData reports like the Bestseller, Market Comp, Market Share, and Gap Analysis reports, you may have noticed that the autocomplete lists were very long and full of entities with no associated titles.

No longer! We've improved the list filtering and sorting to show only Publishers, Distributors, and Imprints with at least one title associated. This should make it easier to find exactly the entities you're looking for. Happy Filtering!

Sorting improvements — highest quantities first

In the Bestseller, Multiple ISBN and Single ISBN reports, quantity columns, including Units Sold, Value Sold, ASP, % Change, On Hand, On Order, and others, will now sort with the highest quantity first if you click on the column header on the report results pages. 

Price filters in the Gap Analysis reports

You can now filter your Gap Analysis results based on the list price of each title in your Comp Market. This allows you to identify gaps in your home market within a specific price point.

Go forth and Gap Analyze with abandon!




December 2017

Gap Analysis: Buying Gaps

When setting up a Buying Gaps report, you may notice that some markets' names in the "Select a home market" dropdown are now followed by an asterisk (*): 

Markets with an asterisk have insufficient inventory data, usually because one or more of the retailers contributing to that aggregate don't supply inventory data. This means the Buying Gaps report may return titles that are in stock in the selected home market, since the inventory data we have is incomplete and therefore can't be verified. The Buying Gaps report will always return titles that have no sales reported in the selected home market. 

Gap Analysis: Inventory Performance

The "Select a home market" dropdown in the Inventory Performance Gap Analysis report has also been modified so you can more easily identify markets with complete and actionable inventory data available — after all, you can only analyze inventory performance if you have data about a market's inventory!

 

To make your Inventory Performance home market selection process speedier, we've marked aggregates with unavailable inventory data with an asterisk (*), and you will not be able to run Inventory Performance reports on home markets without inventory data.

Update your saved passwords!

The password for the SalesData Research Portal has changed, so if you want access to all of BookNet's subscriber-only research reports you'll want to swing by the Research Portal box in the right-hand sidebar of the home page for the new password.  




July 2017

Home Page Customization: You can now view your home page data in either Units Sold or Value Sold (List)

Your selection between Value and Units is saved until the next time you change it, so you see the data in the measure that's most useful to you. 

Home Page Graph Totals: Insights at a glance

See totals for the over-time line graph and top-subjects bar graph at a glance, in your chosen measure.

Redesigned Single ISBN Reports: Collapsible boxes so you can get everything you want "above the fold"

Clicking the circled-arrow icons expands and collapses the Bibliographic Data and Sales Summary bars. Like the Single ISBN sales graph, the site will remember your preference for your next Single ISBN report. 

The Single ISBN Multi-Market Report: View the sales of a single title in multiple markets

You can access this new report from the Single ISBN criteria screen or through the "Change to Multi Market View" button on any Single ISBN Week-by-Week report.

Email Settings: Subscribe or unsubscribe from SalesData emails from your Settings page

You may have noticed that we haven't been in touch very much lately. We've now given you the ability to opt-in to hearing from us more regularly.
Pop over to your Settings page (in the left-hand menu on the SalesData site) to subscribe or unsubscribe from SalesData mailing lists.






June 2017

The Inventory Performance Gap Analysis report now allows filtering by setting a units-sold threshold in the Home Market.

Search results and the Multi-ISBN report now include a Publisher column.

When you select Year to Date as your Reporting Period, the number of weeks will now be displayed.




January 2016

Launched the new SalesData site!

New features:

  • There are features on the SalesData home page, including a company sales summary and new graphs.

  • The Title/ISBN Report from our old system has been changed to the Single ISBN Report in the new SalesData. We have updated the column choices, added charted results to the report page, and made some changes to the search parameter options.

  • The Title Trend report and Titles by Market report have been combined and changed to the Multiple ISBN Report.

  • Some of our reports now have tabs to help set up the criteria.

  • In a Single ISBN Report, you have the option to report any bibliographic errors you find. We have updated our pop-up, so take a look at the new options and keep an eye out for errors or typos!

  • Our sharing options have been updated and changed for the new SalesData. You can use these handy tools on any report page to download or email a report to someone, whether or not they are part of your user group, to share the parameters of your report with your user group, or to set up scheduled emails containing updated reports to be delivered to people in (and out of) your user group. 

  • You now have the ability to download multiple things at once while still using the rest of the SalesData website.

  • Both the Bestseller Report and the Single ISBN Report have the option to customize columns, which allows you to turn columns on or off in the results table, as well as to save a preset, custom column arrangement. 

  • The Quick Search function, located on the far right of the SalesData header, is a powerful search tool that allows you to enter any author name, book title, subtitle, series name, or ISBN to quickly see results based on lifetime sales and sorted by units sold in the current week. The new search tool is faster, and we have updated our results page!

  • There are plenty of new, hidden features in the search criteria for all the reports in the new SalesData. Here are a few of them:

    • Set start and/or end dates for the Bestseller Report

    • Apply new search filters like "only show titles with illustrations" and more

    • Use our format and subject search trees (with exact BISAC codes for subjects)

    • Set up detailed criteria for a Bestseller report

    • Specify the publisher in the Market Share Report

    • Use our new preset time frames in certain reports (e.g., snapshot, consecutive weeks/months/quarters, year-over-year)



February 2015

General

  • Updated Retailer List for January 2015

All Reports

  • Export tool update: All reports export to native Excel now. 

    • Reports no longer prompt you to accept an XML format file.

    • All report exports open on all mobile devices including Apple and a variety of Android products.

    • NOTE: exported data looks slightly different in terms of column widths. All column selections and the order they display should be as you saved them.

Market Share Report

  • Bug fix: YTD display was not sorting according to the most recent column when Time was selected as the column display.


October 2014

Market Share Report

  • Bug fixes:

    • Drill-down data was not showing the correct percentages.

    • YTD was ignoring dates in the past; now YTD compares dates from any point in past. e.g. YTD June 2014 will compare to June 2013 to June 2012, etc., rather than the current week,

    • Text in header will show Units or Value depending on what is selected. Previously showed Value only.

    • Drill-down into subjects or formats was not exporting correctly. Would only export the top level of the data.

Title Trend Report

  • Bug fixes:

    • Value Sold ASP and Value Sold List value sold calculations were brought in line with other calculations to exclude negative sales/returns at the till.



January 2014

General

  • Updated Retailer List

Bestseller Report

  • Bug fixes: sort order and rank, year searches, and retain ISBN order selections.

Titles by Market

  • Bug fix: titles with only on-hand numbers.

Title Trend

  • Bug fix: column headings.


November 2013

General

  • Updated global navigation on top-right to show Retailer List.

  • Updated User Manual.

  • Simple search returns titles for the most recent week.

    • For Title and Contributor searches, the results will bring back titles with lifetime data matching the title or contributor name to return a complete list.

Title Trend Report

  • Create Title Trend Report

    • Expanded bibliographic search criteria.

  • Title Trend Report Results

    • Chronological or reverse chronological column order display.

Titles by Market Reports

  • Overall performance improvements

  • Create Titles by Market Report form changes

    • All Market must be included in all search results

    • All search results limited to the watchlist if there is a watchlist

    • Expanded sales period date selection capability

    • Expanded bibliographic search criteria

    • Allows for Sort by All Lifetime

    • Display up to 500 rows

  • Titles by Market Report Results

    • Addition of All Lifetime column



July 2013

Homepage

  • Sales Summary displays only the top level All aggregates instead of provincial and store breakdowns

  • Export to CSV, Excel and PDF available for the Sales Summary and Industry Snapshot

  • Accounts with watchlists can now see New This Week for their own titles

Bestseller Report

  • Ability to turn off the blank rows in the display

  • Four new columns are available to be added to the bestseller report

    • First Sale Date

    • No. of Weeks Since First Sale

    • First On Hand Date

    • No. of Weeks Since First On Hand