New publication on sales estimations in the book industry
14 June 2019
Efforts of the research group have culminated in a further scientific publication. The manuscript “Sales estimations in the book industry – comparing management predictions with market response models in the children’s book market” by Cord Otten, Michel Clement and Dominik Stehr was accepted for publication in the Journal of Media Business Studies.
In this study, the authors identify, quantify, and generalize the sales drivers of children’s and young adult literature books and investigate whether quantitative prediction models improve prerelease sales predictions. Publishers of fictional literature often struggle to come up with reasonable sales forecasts. This may be due to three reasons. First, insights from related, but distinct domains, such as from general fictional literature to children’s and teenager literature, may not be transferable. This study indicates that main insights about sales elasticities are robust across sub-markets. Second, theoretical predictors may not be available in practice, such as online reviews before publication. The study demonstrates that management predictions can be improved based on available information. Third, managers may lack the resources to set up prediction models. The technical prediction in the study builds relatively simple statistical tools in order to facilitate implementation.
This research is a result of projects B2 and C2 in the first funding period, when the research group investigated adoption and distribution strategies for media products with short product life-cycles.
Otten, C., Clement, M., & Stehr, D. (2019). Sales estimations in the book industry – comparing management predictions with market response models in the children’s book market. Journal of Media Business Studies, forthcoming.