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From Quill & Quire:

BookNet Canada, the not-for-profit agency dedicated to promoting innovation in the Canadian supply chain, will start tracking e-book sales in addition to print book sales by the end of the year.

BookNet has tracked sales of print books since 2005 but acknowledges there’s a rising demand for e-book data. “We have a lot of publishers talking to us about it directly, and we’re also hearing about it in the market,” says BookNet account manager and publisher liaison Pamela Millar.

No other agency in Canada tracks industry-wide e-book sales. Nielsen BookScan is working toward that end in the U.S. and the U.K., says BookScan U.S. senior vice-president and general manager Jonathan Stolper, but so far “nobody’s got it.”

Still, BookNet’s initial e-book sales data isn’t likely to furnish bestsellers’ lists like those found in magazines and newspapers. There’s currently no infrastructure in place for retailers to report e-book sales as they do for print books, so e-book tracking will be conducted through publishers. For now, BookNet plans on looking at e-book subject rather than title-level trends from publishers, as well as measuring market volume and value in the e-book sector.

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