Laurie Petrycki writes: “A cool mapping mashup that links our French book database with Google maps, hacked by Julien, the French office’s sys admin. The book icons are color coded to show the probability of finding the book (click on an icon to see store details). Our sales rep in France has already used the map to encourage bookstores to maintain appropriate stock. In your mind’s eye, you can see yourself wandering through the bookshops in the 6th Arrondissement.” Nice work, Julien!
Xavier Cazin, Editor in Chief of Editions O’Reilly (O’Reilly France) adds: “It works only for french books yet, and french zip codes, because these are the only sales and geo data we have currently in our database. The sales are updated daily, so the color of the bookstore may change depending of when was its last order.”
I’ve asked our US staff to look into the possibility of a similar mashup for our US retail presence. But I should warn that it’s a harder problem. In the US, a huge percentage of our sales are through chain stores, and we don’t get per-store data on what books they carry. Even in France, as you’ll note, we don’t show the absolute presence or absence of a book, just the likelihood that they have it in stock.