Source to Make Barnes & Noble's Daily Sales Data Available

Posted on December 13, 1999

The Source Information Management Company has announced a contract with Barnes & Noble Inc. to jointly offer daily sales data to magazine publishers via Source Information's Interactive Communication Network (ICN), a business-to-business Internet site. The data will cover sales, inventory and distribution on a daily store-by-store, title-by-issue basis, from Barnes & Noble's approximately 1,000 bookstores.

"This is a revolutionary development for magazine publishers, especially publishers of weekly periodicals. Never before have publishers been able to access daily sales data, enabling them to evaluate issue performance, predict final sales of current issues and measure the effectiveness of covers," said S. Leslie Flegel, chairman and chief executive officer of The Source. "Magazine publishers will now be able to gauge the performance of specific titles in various regions of the country versus the competition. Barnes & Noble's extraordinary reach in different markets gives publishers the unparalleled opportunity to access information on magazine promotion effectiveness."