NPD Buys Nielsen's US Book Sector Business

Retail information firm The NPD Group has acquired the US portion of Nielsen's information services for the book industry, including US-based BookScan, Books & Consumers, PubEasy and PubNet; plus the three PubTrack services - Digital, Higher Education and Christian.

NPD will launch a new US practice area, NPD Book, to house the seven, all of which will now be branded as NPD services. Nielsen will provide operations support during a transition period, and will continue to own and operate Nielsen Book in nine countries outside the US - including Australia, China and the UK where it runs the ISBN Registration Agency. Nielsen Book also includes Nielsen brands BookScan, BookData, Books & Consumers, BookNet, PubEasy and PubTrack Digital.

BookScan is the largest point-of-sale tracking service for English-language books in the US, tracking c.85% of retail sales of physical books: NPD will also offer sales tracking for digital books; buyer demographics; and insights into print and digital preferences and trends.

NPD will add books to 21 existing practice areas: apparel, appliances, automotive, beauty, consumer electronics, diamonds, e-commerce, entertainment, fashion accessories, food consumption, foodservice, footwear, home, mobile, office supplies, retail, sports, technology, toys, video games, and watches / jewelry. A year ago it bought Nielsen's VideoScan home video POS tracker.

President and COO Karyn Schoenbart (pictured) comments: 'Industry expertise is a hallmark of NPD, and we are excited to add services for the book industry. Like many of our industries, publishing is experiencing rapid and dramatic change. By combining data and industry expertise, we will be able to give the industry a winning advantage in understanding and anticipating trends'.

The firms are online at www.npd.com and www.nielsen.com .