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Publishers are being warned to check their Google Books data online as thousands of titles have been mistakenly attributed to publisher BPR.
Independent UK publisher Children’s Story Publishers spotted the mistake after its books were incorrectly labelled. Simon Hopkins, publisher at Children’s Story Publishers, said: "We contacted Google about the problem a year ago but it was early days for Google Books and we weren’t sure then about the scale of the problem."
Book data is provided to Google Books by Bowker. Sharon Lubrano, Bowker general manager, explained that the BPR label is an internal code used by Bowker to indicate that the publisher information is unknown.
She said: "The code was not meant to be used externally; rather it is an internal cue that prompts us to explore further to get information on a title." Unfortunately, the code was included in some information streams to Bowker’s customers, which included Google Books.
She added: "Of the 7.5 million UK titles in our database, less than one half of one percent (.38%, to be exact) have our internal publisher code (BPR) and need further research."
Hopkins was concerned about how the error could be affecting publishers’ sales. He said: "If a parent wants to buy a book for their child and can’t quite remember all the details, Google Books is somewhere they might look, but our titles would be attributed to the publisher BPR. We are not sure how many times that’s happened and how many sales we and other publishers have lost as a result."
Bowker said that publishers can contact the company at datasubmission@bowker.co.uk if they want to update their records.