BIC is delighted to announce that the launch of the BIC Metadata Map project will be made at the “Building a Better Business” seminar on Thursday 12^th April.

Metadata underpins our digital age. It drives discoverability and book sales but all too often we have little knowledge of just how this vital asset flows through the supply chain to reach customers. To help publishers, retailers and others improve their understanding and target their resources more effectively, BIC has commissioned a 2-year project to map the increasingly dynamic and complex flow of metadata from producer to consumer.

The ‘map’ will be the sum of contributions from collaborating participants in the metadata supply chain and is intended to be published as an updatable online resource for contributing organisations, to show where the metadata goes, what happens to it, who uses it, and how.

The goal is to promote an increased level of understanding across the industry with regards organisations’ practices by the mutual sharing of up to date information. BIC strongly believes this will help resolve issues and identify gaps and grey areas within the metadata supply chain. As a result, it is expected that all participants should benefit from the enhanced promotion and discovery of books that enhanced metadata provides, potentially leading to increased sales.

A key part of BIC's ongoing mission is to optimise sales of books through improving the "quality" (accuracy, depth, timeliness and comprehensiveness) of metadata. It has been proven that good metadata grows sales (Nielsen research 2012) therefore optimising the flow of metadata through the supply chain will further enhance these benefits and accelerate that sales growth

A project description can be found here

A full project description can be found here:

The project will be formally launched by Peter Mathews, who has been retained as Consultant for the project, at BIC’s annual Building a Better Business Seminar at London Book Fair on Thursday 12 April 2018 and is free to attend. Find out more here: Programme and Speaker info.

Karina Luke, Executive Director, BIC

About BIC:

BIC is the UK book industry’s independent supply chain organisation and is charged with making the print and digital book supply chain more efficient which we do by:

•             Developing standards and promoting their adoption,

•             Connecting experts across industry

•             Enabling innovation in the supply chain

Established in 1991, BIC is an independent, not for profit members’ organisation working at the heart of the UK book industry. It is sponsored by The Booksellers Association, The British Library, The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and The Publishers Association to promote supply chain efficiency in all sectors of the book world through e-commerce, best practice, training, events, and the application of standard processes and procedures. BIC is governed by an Executive and an Operational Board, both of which are comprised of members across the entire book industry. Visit BIC at www.bic.org.uk and follow at @BIC1UK

About Peter Mathews

Peter has over 35 years’ experience in the UK Book Trade in bookselling (Hammick’s), book wholesaling (TBD), book metadata aggregation (BookData / Nielsen) and most recently in publishing (Cambridge University Press).