To the book trade's mild surprise, Thursday morning's BookScan data revealed that Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol was not the bestselling book in New Zealand this week - Diana Gabaldon's An Echo in the Bone had just pipped it to the post.
BookScan is the service run by research company
Nielsen, which measures every consumer book purchase.
New Zealand is unique in the English-speaking world in having a comprehensive panel of book retailers contributing to the data.
BookScan was first launched in the UK in 1999 and began in this country in 2007, but without the participation of major retailer Whitcoulls.
Whitcoulls came on board in December 2008. This means that at the end of this year the industry will have its first full picture of how book sales have trended over a 12-month period.
Publishers know how many copies they send to retailers, but BookScan measures what goes through the till. "It's what's sold to consumers that's the important thing," says Ka Meechan, managing director, Asia Pacific, for Nielsen Book Services.
Christmas is peak time in the highly seasonal book trade, and the United Kingdom has just had "Big Thursday" - October 1, when 800 new titles were released.
New Zealand booksellers will be watching the BookScan data closely to see if Christmas 2009 provides any cheer following the long winter of recession.
