A publisher selling directly to readers and to bookshops, with several imprints and a catalogue that never stands still. The old shop treated titles like any other product, and keeping it in line was manual work.

A book is not a product with a price and a stock count. The same title exists in print, ePub and PDF, each with its own price; it can be on pre-order before release, sold out and then available again; it belongs to a series, an age range, an imprint. And the data describing it — bibliographic record, identifiers, prices, availability — isn't born in the shop: it arrives as ONIX from the publishing system and changes without anyone touching the site. On top of that, two audiences with different rules: the reader buying a copy and the bookshop ordering to resell.