Nielsen BookData was first established in 1858 when Joseph Whitaker founded The Bookseller magazine. The early issues included a listing of publications each month compiled from 129 publishers. The data elements listed included price, publisher, author and a brief description of the book. Since then the number of publishers and elements we gather has grown exponentially but the principle remains the same: to disseminate bibliographic data to the industry to aid the discovery and purchase of books. 

As well as our Metadata services, we have a long and established role within the book supply chain measuring book sales around the world. In 2023 we merged with GfK and extended our reach from 12 territories to 17 countries. Our first BookScan panel was launched in the UK in 1998 and we’ve been measuring weekly point of sale book sales ever since. In 2016 we launched our e-book sales reporting service in the UK which now also includes data from Australia and New Zealand.  

Our Books & Consumers Survey provides data back to 2012 on the who, what, when, where, why and how of consumer book purchasing, based on a monthly survey of c3,000 UK book-buyers that are nationally representative of those aged 13-84.  

We are extremely proud to run the ISBN and SAN Agencies for the UK & Ireland and a number of BookData employees play key roles in the development and preservation of international industry standards such as Thema, working closely with organisations such as BIC and EDItEUR.  

We employ around 130 staff and we have offices in the UK, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the UAE. Nielsen BookData is wholly owned by NielsenIQ.