Testing Your Data With Nielsen

Nielsen Book Data and other data aggregators need to test your files to ensure the quality of the data that you send them. Testing with Nielsen is actually a great opportunity to clean up some of your historic data and to set parameters for data on future titles.

Nielsen offers three cycles of testing without charge to enable data suppliers to adopt this important standard for the communication of book metadata. They encourage publishers to supply all the products they are making available to the general retail market in their ONIX feed including print, eBook, audio and digital.

For every subsequent round of testing where needed, a charge will be made until the file has reached the required standard to enable it to be loaded to the Nielsen Book ‘live’ database.

Key Points:

• The first thing you need to do is complete the Data Feed Registration Form. This form must be completed in full before you can start sending test feeds to Nielsen Book Data.
• Along with the form, you will need to submit a test file that you generate off your system and drag/drop into the form. Alternatively, you could also create an ONIX feed in Destinations and mark it to go 'Once'. It will take 15 minutes for the file to go off the system. When it does, the system will then turn the feed off. 
• Best practice is to supply a file to Nielsen with a range of product availability codes and publishing statuses, such as: 01 (Cancelled), 06 (Out of stock indefinitely), 07 (Out of print), 12 (Not yet available), 23 (POD), 31 (Out of stock), 32 (Reprinting), 43 (No longer supplied by us) and 51 (Not available, publisher indicates OP). They also prefer to be sent a range of formats, such as hardback, paperback, ebook, epub, etc. If your organisation publishes a small list and therefore does not have all of these codes available, then you will need to let your Nielsen contact know.
• Please note that it can take up to 4 weeks to receive feedback from Nielsen regarding your test file. 
• Your file will go through stages of testing - the first one is to ensure that the file is compatible with the Nielsen system. Assuming all is fine, then it will get sent to the Editorial team who will check through the finer details of your data itself.
• Once your test file has been reviewed by Editorial, your Nielsen contact will email you feedback regarding the quality of your mandatory and non-mandatory data. You must clean up any issues considered mandatory before you can send another test file. Whilst non-mandatory fields are not required, they are often examples of industry good practice, and so we recommend that you try to integrate those corrections as well. The cleaner and more complete your data is, the better your products will be represented in your markets.
• Cover images are uploaded to a different area from the title data. Your Nielsen contact will supply the pathway information.
  • It is particularly important that you follow Nielsen's instructions for supply and formatting images. If you have any questions, you can email: [e-mail].
• You can email Nielsen directly with any queries regarding setting up your feeds with them: [e-mail]

Once Your Test Feeds Have Been Approved:

You will need to complete a final Data Feed Supply form before you can set up your regular feed schedule. Most of the information is specific to your organisation, but there are parts related to Stison. Here is the relevant information:

• Scope of First File: You will decide between Full, Partial or Other. Typically, a publisher will send a full file in the first instance.
• Scope of Subsequent Files: Incremental - the Stison system is set up to send a full file first followed subsequently by incremental feeds with only data/products that have changed since the last send. 
• Frequency of Files Supplied: Regular feeds can be set to go Daily, Weekly or Monthly on the Stison system. 
• Date of Regular File Supply: Daily feeds will go out any weekday between Monday and Friday depending on when you first set up the destination; Weekly feeds go out on Sundays; Monthly feeds go out on the 1st of the month.
• Time of Regular File Supply: Feeds will go out around 6 am.
• File Format: This should be set at ONIX 3.0.
• Intended File Name Pattern: Your file name pattern will be something similar to this: onix-SL-YYYYMMDD.xml, where the first acronym is the short code for your company on the Stison system. For you organisation, you can find this information in General -> Configuration and in the far right-hand corner of the screen.
• File Compression: No compression.

Further information regarding Nielsen data supply.