Bowker Pubnet Tech Support, Customer Service and Sales:

Telephone:
1-800-PUBNET-1
(1-800-782-6381)

Fax:
908-219-0195

E-mail:
info@pubnet.org

Billing/Mailing Address:
Bowker/Pubnet Customer Service Department
630 Central Ave.
New Providence, NJ 07974

Pubnet Marketing:
marketing@bowker.com

Pubnet User's Group E-mail Discussion:
Julie Nemec at NACS
Telephone:
1-800-622-7498, ext. 2352
E-mail:
jnemec@nacs.org

Visit Pubnet's Website:
http://www.pubnet.org/

In this April 2003 issue:

• Key Players Appointed
• Bowker Purchases PubEasy
• Pubnet User Group Meeting
• Product Enhancements
• Upcoming Shows for Pubnet
• On a Technical Note
• More than PO's and POA's
• New Pubnet Users WELCOME!

Charles Halpin has been appointed General Manager of Pubnet. Charles has been associated with Pubnet for several years, and most recently, he served as Chairman of the Pubnet Advisory Board. Charles can be contacted at charles.halpin@pubnet.org

Maria Cuaresma, formerly with MISG, recently joined Pubnet as an Account Executive. Through her work at MISG, Maria became very familiar with Pubnet. In her new role, she will be prospecting and assisting new accounts. Maria can be contacted at maria@pubnet.org

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Bowker recently purchased PubEasy, a Web-based book industry site complementary to Pubnet that enables publishers to offer real-time, self-service price and availability checking, order status checking (regardless of how the order was placed) and electronic ordering. This purchase marks a further step in streamlining the book publishing supply chain. Like Pubnet, PubEasy is available without cost for retailers.

While PubEasy has a dominant position in the UK market, there are already more than a dozen publishers using the service in the US including Random House, Harper Collins, AOL Time Warner and the Holtzbrink companies, such as St. Martin's and Henry Holt. PubEasy installation interfaces directly with publisher fulfillment systems for large publishers on a real-time basis, and PubEasy also features the Exchange program for smaller publishers, providing a Web-based interface for publishers with small to medium-sized catalogs.

Retailers can join PubEasy on our Website at http://www.pubeasy.com/

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Pubnet User Group Meeting

Pubnet will hold its 2003 User Group meeting at the Boston Marriott in Peabody, MA on Thursday and Friday, October 2 & 3, 2003. The meeting will kick off with a cocktail hour with hors d'oeuvres and dinner on Thursday evening, and the meeting will run all day on Friday. Conference highlights will include a detailed review of Pubnet's new features including order and shipment visibility, compliance checking and certification and publisher rapid response, a cutting-edge industry speaker (TBA), bookstore and publisher panels and an introduction to PubEasy services. We will also talk about plans to integrate the services and solicit your views.

The cost for the conference (including the opening cocktails and dinner and Friday lunch) is $295 per person, and hotel rooms are $142 including taxes. Up to June 30, we are offering an early registration price of $245.

Several major POS vendors will be holding user group meetings on the Thursday, so we expect good retailer participation.

To see meeting agenda, click here Pubnet User Group Agenda. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open this agenda.

For more information about the area, please click on the following links from the Boston and Salem Visitors Bureaus:

http://www.salem.org/

This is a great opportunity to interact with industry professionals and colleagues and take advantage of this forum to learn and discuss the latest in supply chain efficiency issues--this should be a "must attend" meeting on your calendar! To reserve a space today, please fax 908-219-0191 or call Sarah Spallone at 908-219-0076.

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Product Enhancements

Pubnet Rapid Response Testing

Publishers will want to follow in the steps of Houghton-Mifflin, Harper Collins, and Random House by adding Pubnet's Rapid Response feature.

Rapid Response allows Pubnet booksellers to receive a purchase order acknowledgement from their supplier within 15 minutes or less of sending a purchase order, instead of the worst-case 24-hour response time.

Pubnet developed this feature in response to requests from our booksellers for faster acknowledgements. We've improved our software, and we encourage publishers to take advantage of Rapid Response.

Document Cycle Tracking System (DCTS)

Pubnet is developing a Document Cycle Tracking System (DCTS), which will provide order visibility and shipment management.

Soon, users will be able to log on to http://www.pubnet.org/to check their order status and shipping information, much like tracking a UPS or FedEx shipment. We're giving sneak previews and getting feedback from Pubnet stakeholders whenever possible.

General Merchandise Testing

Pubnet is currently testing, sending and receiving orders for non-book items with several publishers, point-of-sale providers, and general merchandise vendors.

The goal for Pubnet is to automate the full supply chain system for bookstores and to include items such as logo merchandise, hard goods, etc. We're working to standardize documents and to accommodate EANs, ISBNs, and the often more complex UPC codes.

If you have questions or are interested in testing any of these Pubnet product enhancements, please contact David Davis at 919-957-4847 or e-mail mailto:david.davis@pubnet.org

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Upcoming Shows for Pubnet

Pubnet buffs can catch up on the latest and greatest systems enhancements by attending the 2003 trade shows listed below. (For further trade show information, click on the relevant Web site.) Please stop by our booth and see us.

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On A Technical Note
From Oxford University Press (USA)

Reminder: Effective 9/20/02, Oxford University Press (USA) is picking up a Backorder Cancellation Override Date from an X12 850 Purchase Order delivered via EDI. According to the BISAC ANSI X12 version 3.6 documentation, the DTM segment will have a code “175” in DTM01 and a Date in DTM02 in YYMMDD format. We can pick this date up from the Order Header (DTM in Table/Position 1/150) or from an individual Line Item (DTM in Table/Position 2/210).

This date will override any default setting for a backorder cancellation date for both Out-of-Stock and Not-Yet-Published titles that a customer may have previously set up. Please note that this is for use as a “Cancel if not shipped by” date only (Code “175”).

If this date is in the Order Header DTM segment, we will populate it down through all of the line items. If this date does not appear in the order header, but only in an individual Line Item, it will override the default for only that item. If a date appears in both the header and at line item level, the date at the Line Item will replace the date from the Header level.

If customers do not want backorders, they should not send a DTM/175 segment. If customers must send a DTM segment with the 175 qualifier, they must send the current day’s date to avoid an accidental backorder.

For further information, contact Catherine Guldner at Oxford University Press, 919 677-0977, ext.5229, or email guldnerc@oup-usa.org

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More than PO's and POA's

In addition to sending Purchase Orders and Purchase Order Acknowledgements, Pubnet can handle many other document types including Invoices and Advanced Shipping Notices.

If you would like to receive these documents and your Point-of-Sale system is set up to receive, please contact Maria Cuaresma for more information at maria@pubnet.org or call 919-572-5659.

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New Pubnet Users WELCOME!

Our New Bookstores and Distributors:

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