What does Couplet _TM do?

by Bob Maurer

Developed specifically for publishers, Couplet is an information management and communications tool that makes the transmission of title and contact information, easy and efficient. Couplet also includes a robust e-mail management capability to support targeted promotional group e-mailing. With these capabilities, Couplet helps you ensure your clients always have the most up-to-date information on your titles and promotions. Furthermore, Couplet works seamlessly with all editions of Publishers' Assistant. No need to worry about data conversions when you find you have a need for publishing specific software.

Managing your title information

Couplet will help you to manage and communicate your title information quickly and easily. Couplet maintains a robust set of data on your titles, which you can forward to your trading partners as often as you wish. Couplet supports the ONIX International standard for title information published jointly by EDItEUR, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) of New York, and Book Industry Communication of London. Most major buyers and distributors have already implemented the ONIX standard into their information systems. So, Couplet will give you a leg-up on working more closely with those major clients. See why current and accurate information on your titles will help your partners sell more copies of your books.

When entering your bibliographic data into Couplet, you will want to enter as much information as possible. The more information you enter, the more information you can provide to your trading partners. Couplet lets you enter all the important information on your book, including the:

• title
• subtitle
• contributors (author, illustrator, editor, etc.)
• publication date
• edition
• copyright year
• ISBN
• ISBN 13
• EAN 13
• UPC
• genre — which is used in categorizing your books for particular audiences
• audience code — which explains who you are trying to sell the book to. Audience codes are part of the ONIX standard and are designed to help your trading partners understand to whom they should be selling the book
• BISAC subject code — which is yet another way to categorize your books
• promotional information — to inform your trading partners of your promotions. Also allows you to identify any special promotions, and provides the ability to indicate both starting and ending dates for the promotion. This capability will be particularly useful when, in a future release, Couplet will be able to transmit your promotional information to your website
• promotional text — so that the buyers can make sure that they have adequate stock
• any reviews the book has received
• a general comment — whatever notes you want to keep track of for your own title
• the binding type
• number of pages
• book cover image
• sample text

All of this information can then be transmitted electronically to all of your trading partners through common communication tools like email or FTP.

Once you've entered the information for one of your titles, updating that information is as simple as changing whatever items need to be changed. You enter all the information on your title once, update it as needed, and send it to whomever you wish, whenever you wish, as often as you wish.

Importing and exporting title information is quick and easy. Importing allows you to pull into your database the information on titles you may be selling for other publishers, friends in the industry, etc. When someone wants to send you title information, they can send it in a variety of common formats, such as CSV (Comma Separated Values), Excel, or an XML document. You will be able to quickly pull all of the necessary information into your database, without having to re-enter the data. In addition to being able to export in these same common formats, you'll also be able to send your title information to your major buyers in the ONIX standard format.

Think about what it would mean to your publishing business to be able to keep everyone who needs the information fully informed on all of your titles and promotions.

Managing your contacts

Keeping track of your business contacts is very easy with Couplet. You have the ability to enter:

• contact ID — which is your own numbering system for tracking account numbers or contact numbers for reference. Not required for Couplet, but available if you wish to have them
• company name
• first name
• last name
• full address — including county and country
• two phone numbers
• e-mail address
• Web address
• separate mailing address — for non-postal mailings such as FedEx or UPS
• separate billing contact — for those times when the ship to and bill to are different
• You can designate a contact as either a client, author, supplier, sales representative or employee
• You can exclude any contact from your mailing lists — for those contacts to whom you do not wish to mail promotional information
• You can assign customer codes. These are your own codes, which are assigned to contacts to categorize them. Examples: if you want to identify all distributors you would give them a distributor code, retailers would get a retailer code, consultants a consultant code, etc. Or, you might choose to categorize them by the source that provided the contact, such as a website generated contact, or an e-mail list from Dan Poynter, etc.
• the biographies of your authors and/or their contributors — so that you have biographical data on the author and contributors, which is useful for the web site and for your buyers
• general comments to keep track of your interactions with this contact.

Importing and exporting contact information is also quick and easy. Importing allows you to pull into your database the contact information others send you (mailing lists, etc.). When someone sends you contact information, they simply generate a file in any of several commonly used formats, and you can quickly review the information and pull it into your contact database, without having to re-enter the data. If you wish to send copies of your contact information, exporting allows you to send contact data via electronic means in those same common formats. Your partners can incorporate your contact information into their databases and, as with importing, do it quickly and easily, without re-entering the data.

Targeted E-mailing

Developing targeted group e-mails to support your marketing efforts and communicate your promotions is easy to do with Couplet's e-mail wizard. The email wizard sends your email to each individual in your collection, so they don't feel like "one of thousands". You'll do the following to send a group email:

1) Decide who you want to e-mail.

Is it a single individual, or a group of contacts? If it's a group, how is that group to be grouped? You can choose group members by:

• the last contact update date range,
• customers who either have, or have not, placed an order since whatever date you choose,
• clients who have an account balance or have a zero account balance,
• contacts who are coded as clients, authors, suppliers, sales reps and/or employees, and the ability to group among those (example: I want authors and suppliers, but not customers, sales reps or employees),
• zip codes, with the ability to both include and exclude particular zip codes,
• clients who have purchased certain titles but not others,
• address including by using a certain zip code range (useful for geographic based marketing),
• country,
• who has purchased certain titles, but have not purchased certain other titles,

or by any combination of the above listed items.

2) Compose your e-mail message

Give your e-mail message a subject line and then fill the body with the text of the message. You can either type directly into the wizard screen, or paste a message you may have previously created.

3) Send the email

This is as simple clicking on the "Send Email" button you will then see the progress of the e-mails being sent. Emails are sent individually, so your recipients feel like they are important and receiving a personal communication, instead of feeling as if they are being treated like one of thousands.

Think of how efficiently you can communicate your various promotional activities with this fantastic, easy-to-use tool.

Couplet is a robust, stand-alone tool for information management and communication. However, it also fully interacts with and supports Publishers' Assistant (any version), our publishing industry specific business management tool. When you are ready for an all-encompassing, end-to-end business management solution, you will be able to seamlessly incorporate Publishers' Assistant into your business operations. All of the information you have loaded into Couplet will be immediately available to your selected version of Publishers' Assistant.

Start selling more books today with Couplet. Purchase your own copy of this fantastic publishing industry communication and title information management tool.

See why keeping your trading partners up to date can mean big money to your business.