Book Industry Conference – the need for books in media information

The need for information on books in the media – the sector covered exclusively by Books & Media – was stressed at BIC this week.

BookBrunch reported that Mark Bell of the BBC boasted of the Corporation's role as "the biggest producer of books programmes in the world": Dominic Myers, MD of Waterstone's, asked him how information about books on TV and radio might be broadcast more efficiently to booksellers. Cathy Rentzenbrink of Waterstone's reminded the audience that "the conversation with the customer is at the heart of everything we do", and that when customers went into bookshops because they had heard about books, they wanted to buy those books immediately, or at the very least to speak to booksellers who knew the books and could order them.
 Such conversations were enabled by good contacts, and efficient flows of information, between booksellers and publishers. [A service such as Books & Media, BookBrunch's cousin within BDS, can help too.] In a message later, Rentzenbrink referred to the B&M site as “wonderful”.

Books & Media email newsletter goes out to over 10,000 industry professionals each week. The site is soon to become a paid-for subscription service, but visitors can still see the assets of the site and its invaluable tie-in databases covering newspapers, TV, radio, movies and social networking by simply taking a few minutes to register at www.booksandmedia.co.uk/register.asp.