German technology and information provider hits landmark of 100,000 titles available on its platform Metabooks, the Portuguese-language version of German Books in Print (VLB) | New service: Launch of Pubnet, the company’s North American commerce service, announced at the Rio Book Fair 2019

In its third year running Metabooks Brasil, the Portuguese-language version of German Books in Print (VLB), reaches the milestone of 100,000 active titles and another 20,000 off-catalogue titles for research purposes in its database. So far, nearly 500 publishers and imprints use the platform’s standardized metadata to display book information. “Metabooks has been growing rapidly since its launch in 2017. The 100,000 titles available on the platform now equal about 75 percent of Brazilian market sales. Consolidating our business so fast has only been possible with the strong support of our partner Câmara Brasileira do Livro (CBL), the Brazilian Book Chamber, and in close cooperation with our customers,” says Metabooks CEO Ricardo Costa. The database run by Metabooks Brasil Ltda. is a joint venture by the German technology and information provider MVB and Frankfurter Buchmesse.

Metabooks’ customers at a glance

In addition to Brazils major publishers, such as Companhia das Letras (part of Penguin Random House), Edições Loyola, Editora Intrínsica, Editora Melhoramentos, Editora Planeta, Editora Rocco, Editora Sextante, Grupo Record, Grupo Summus, Somos Educação and many others, the leading retailers and wholesalers in the market also use the Metabooks database.

Distributors such as Agrega, Catavento, Disal, Inovação and Loyola, online retailers like Amazon and Submarino as well as booksellers such as Blooks Livraria, Livraria Cultura, Martins Fontes, and Saraiva receive all data entailed in the platform through its integration with their systems. Many other market players are in the testing phase now.

The Brazilian Secretary of Culture provides the country’s more than 6,000 public libraries with access to the Metabooks database to support the institutions with their research and acquisition processes. Nielsen Bookscan Brasil uses Metabooks’ validated and standardized product information for its services.

Introducing Pubnet

For the start of the international book fair in Rio de Janeiro last Friday, MVB announced to bring another service to the Brazilian market: Pubnet, its North American book trade's EDI community. The market leader in Canada and the US organizes the order processes between publishers and book retailers with the standard global Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) – over ten million transactions performed in 2017.

Orders are sent to Pubnet by ERP systems on a completely automated basis and forwarded to the appropriate publishers. The key benefit of the system is its increase in efficiency: Book retailers connect to a single system and can access all relevant publishers, while publishers no longer need to maintain separate links with thousands of book retailers. This is particularly relevant for communications between major book retailers and smaller publishers as well as smaller book retailers and publishers. EDI is an international standard protocol used by the most diverse industry sectors such as pharmaceutical and automotive.

“With all its experience in two of the world's largest book markets, Pubnet now sets out to create a worldwide community, connecting book buyers and sellers in many countries. As with Metabooks, the first step of this internationalization process is Brazil. From now on, bookstores and publishers from Brazil, the United States and Canada will be able to connect for business transactions. And soon, other countries will also join this community”, says MVB’s CEO Ronald Schild.