Circana Bookscan is a website dedicated to cataloging book metadata. Folks in the publishing industry use it to find publication dates, editions, publisher information, physical dimensions, and most importantly, sales data.
We here at Ooligan primarily use it to find comparative titles or “comp titles” which are books we use as reference points to inform our own marketing efforts and sales expectations. The books we use have to be very similar and it can be a laborious task if you don’t know what you’re doing. Fortunately, I’m here to walk you through some more advanced features of Circana Bookscan to make finding the data you need easier.
- Click the “Advanced Search” Button
- In order to access the advanced features of Circana you’re going to need to hit the “Advanced Search” button. This is located on the home page to the right of the regular search bar. This should take you to the “Filtered Search” page. This page will have four columns of categories to customize your search.
- General Filters
- On the left are the “General Filters” columns. These are general categories that you can specify to narrow your search. If you’re trying to find comp titles, the most useful categories are “Audience Age” and “Format.” If you’re comping for a children’s book you want to be able to only search for children’s books. Conversely if, like Ooligan, you only publish softcover books, you need to be able to exclude hardcover books from your search. You can do this by pressing the “Exclude” box above each category. This will deduct your desired category from your final search results.
- BISAC Filters
- BISAC codes are codes assigned to books that describe their form and subject matter. You’ll notice there are three levels of BISAC codes to choose from and that’s because BISAC codes have subcategories within themselves. You can use these three levels to help narrow down your search. On the top level, you might put “Fiction” which will limit your options in the second category to only subcategories of “Fiction.” From there you might choose “Fiction/Science-Fiction,” and then your third option will be all the subcategories of that. Finally, you might choose “Fiction/Science-Fiction/Steampunk.” Now if you wanted to, you could just go straight to the third category and select the steampunk category, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, working your way from the top down can be helpful.
- Ranges
- The most important tool when it comes to finding comp titles (in my opinion at least) is the ability to set “Ranges.” The “Ranges” column lets you select a range of values you’re looking for in a specific category. For example, if we’re about to publish a 302-page novel priced at $16.99 we’re going to want comp titles that reflect that. So we would set the price range from $16.99–$16.99, the page range from 200–400 (you can afford to be a little looser with page count), and then hopefully be rewarded with a plethora of books of similar length and price point. The most helpful “Ranges” category is “Publication Date.” Comp titles have to be published within the last five years and there’s nothing more frustrating than finding the perfect comp title only to learn that it was published ten years ago. Circana makes sure that doesn’t happen.
These tips are nowhere near comprehensive and are really just scratching the surface of what the advanced search function can do. I mostly focused on finding comp titles but you might need to use it for something else. If you use Circana Bookscan I encourage you to experiment with it because it will make your life easier at some point. I desperately wish I had known how to use this when I was starting out and finding comp titles for the first time.
Happy hunting.