La_Lynne · @La_Lynne
8th Feb 2015 from TwitLonger
Nielsen Bookdata work around for illustrators & translators?
So, Nielsen Bookdata is the mothership of book info. It gets book info from publishers and makes this available (at a price, of course) to bookshops, publishers, Amazon etc. The information in it varies according to what the publisher provides 'garbage in: garbage out' (some publishers NOTORIOUS for bad info). You (author, illustrator, bookseller, publishers etc) want good info in there because you want the books to be found. Bookshops use Nielsen to find books. You go in and ask for a book your mum read that has a woman in it and has a red cover? We fire up Nielsen. All the 100% of every book info is on the front page: every book has an author, a title, a publisher, a size, a weight, a number of pages, a price. Not every book has a price in South African Rand, a translator...an illustrator. This 'second level' info is not 'necessary' in the sense of 'cannot be a book without it' so the slot for 'illustrator' (if it exists, not sure, can't remember) never going to have a wee asterisk saying 'required' so publishers can forget to put it in, it is secondary info anyway, so unlikely to be on front page unless set up by user (comic shop is going to set that up to front page, if it is there). If you don't know what Nielsen looks like, a friendly bookshop will show you, print off your pages if you want, but save them some time & maybe register for a free trail and see how you are listed: http://www.nielsenbookdata.co.uk/controller.php?page=1 This means Amazon searches etc might not bring up illustrators. They might not be mentioned. If they are, it is second level. It is going to be trick to change Nielsen (why ought they to? No more money for them & publishers put stuff in any old how anyway) Here is the potential hack: Illustrators! Translators! Make sure your publisher lists you as 'AUTHOR' with an (illustrator) or (translation) behind your name by all means, but that way you are definitely in there, you are in there at first level, you are in there with 'illustrator' or 'translator' next to your name, you can be FOUND, your books can be FOUND, if they like you they can find out what else you did. Ask your publishers. Look and see how your many books are listed (the info is often haphazardly entered, as mentioned above, it is entirely possible that some of the books that can be found under your name are ones where you have been listed as author) and see which ones can be found just by entering your name and see how that entry differs from the other ones. Huge big firms cannot be changed, but how your publisher enters stuff can. Oh, and maybe see if your publisher would consider changing the info on past books? Don't know if that is possible, but can't see why it wouldn't be. They would have to be able to change spelling mistakes (can also mean a book can't be found...) so, yeah. Ask. Best of luck with this hack.