Epubdirect has changed its name to Vearsa and shifted the scope of its distribution business to focus on its powerful data tools.
Vearsa means ‘verse’ in the Gaelic of the company’s native Ireland and the website has also moved to Vearsa.com, which is a big switch for an established business.
The new branding reflects the way that Vearsa has become more than a distributor as it also offers an impressive package of data analytics. It claims to be the biggest ebook distributor in Europe and has around 350 publishers using its services.
One of the firm’s aims is to reduce publishers’ dependence on market leaders and broaden their revenue base through niche and long-tail ebook stores. Its worldwide distribution network covers more than 100 countries, 1,000 retailers and 65,000 libraries.
It offers detailed data, with Book Tracker monitoring retailer websites daily for millions of titles, covering availability, pricing, geographic rights enforcement, and competitor strategy.
The Ebook Analytics package could be a real boon for many publishers as it consolidates all sales data in one place, rather than having to sift through screens full of confusing Excel files. Daily sales are reported through all retailers and data trends can be identified, covering areas such as performance by country, title and category, making Big Data easy for small publishers.