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The data sources used by publishing houses are mostly limited to generic market data and sales numbers . Detailed insights into customer demographics , buying patterns or topic preferences are largely unavailable or are not collected to a degree that would facilitate sophisticated decision making . Furthermore , data is – in most cases – not available in real time , but only with a lag of several months after publishing .
>> Two conclusions can be drawn once all of the pieces have been fitted together :
Books are published on gut feeling rather than reliable customer data , and book publishers ’ economic success appears to be something more like a coin flip than the result of systematic decision making .
We also have to acknowledge that publishing houses have attempted to scale their organizations ’ databases in recent years as the urgency to adapt business practices has become seemingly inevitable . To improve the quality and quantity of consumer insights , publishing houses have launched trials to crawl data from online sources and book review platforms , intensified collaborations with book retailers to gain access to their data from online and offline sources and tried to leverage the information potential of e-books and e-book platforms . However , these trials lack a scalable , systematic approach to the challenge of advanced market intelligence .