Digital Services

Data Management

IPG has a title database that contains specifications, descriptions, author information, reviews, and cover images for every title that it sells. This mass of information is continuously updated and automatically sent once a week, in electronic form, to more than 120 bookselling organizations. Online booksellers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com, and many more, immediately put this information up on their sites. All of the larger chains and wholesalers rely on this data for ordering and reordering.

Such data feeds are technically very demanding and expensive to provide—in most cases, information must be converted to ONIX, and each recipient has special requirements as to how the data must be formatted; but the ability to provide this data gives IPG-distributed titles an important marketing edge.