Using Metadata for All Its Worth! Leigh Grinstead, LYRASIS Joe Matthews, IPG Larry Norton, INscribe Digital Joshua Tallent, Firebrand Technologies Moderator: Mark Ouimet, Ingram Content Group
How Metadata from Authors Influences Publishing Leigh A. Grinstead, LYRASIS
Putting the Elements into Use What do those publishers really want???
Descriptive Metadata (Find, Identify, Select, Obtain) Title, author, and a human-readable description of a resource Subject or topical information Genre and format of the resource Relationships with other resources part of a series
Metadata for Authors Publishers should be focusing on asking their authors to provide DESCRIPTIVE metadata. The easiest of which to produce is
The Elements to Focus on Title Alternative Title Subtitle Series Title Creator Audience Subjects use BISAC Description Publisher Contributor Type Genres Identifier Language Rights Management Rights Holder
Graduating from Excel to ONIX Larry Norton, INscribe Digital
Graduating from Excel to ONIX What is ONIX? A standardized protocol Why ONIX? Consistency Speed Scalability When ONIX? As soon as you can
Metadata Delivery ONIX out in the wild Joe Matthews Independent Publisher s Group
Metadata Soup Multiple ONIX sources can conflict! Pub/Distributor Primary Onix Transmission Delay Data Aggregator 1/1/2016 2/1/2016 Retail Web Site???? Data Aggregators: Bowker BookNet Canada Nielson Library of Congress Delay Wholesaler Old Distributor 1/7/2016 Out of Print
Solution? Make sure you are the primary source. Acquisitions: Make sure you know who was involved in the past. Contact all former metadata holders and verify they no longer transmit. Verify with all customers that you are the primary source, and will override other sources, Cover the whole industry. If customers are not getting your feed, they will get it from somewhere else. Ask your customers if you can feed direct, and if not, who is their primary. Audit like crazy! Constantly download product data and compare to your data. If there is discrepancy, then there is a metadata conflict and it will happen again!
Valid ONIX Good ONIX Everyone says they have ONIX but it s got to be good. Used for sell sheets, catalogs, sub-distributors, ecommerce, retailers, & reps. Therefore need comps, awards, author hometown, reviews, related titles, bios, rights, alt language blurbs, excerpts, TOC Rich data! Customer Compliance: The dream of ONIX 3.0 1 file for everybody. Reality: separate files for each retailer. Only feed what they need! Interview your provider with an ONIX checklist: Can they: Import ONIX? Feed Daily? To how many accounts? Which fields? Customize ONIX for rights restrictions & delivery rules?
Re-Feeding the Beast Image Issues: Old content has old images which are a common cause of rejection due to higher image quality requirements. BISAC Blues: Your old content used BISAC 2010, and gets rejected by a site using 2015. Translators exist, but the translations are subjective. When to Deliver: B&N and the wholesalers want weekly; Amazon and etailers want it daily. Use Deltas for minor fixes; use Completes for fixing linkages. What to Expect: Amazon is nearly instantaneous; B&N takes 4 days. Ingram is faster than B&T. Keep on top of best practices because they change all the time.
Peculiarities of Amazon EDI vs ONIX EDI data like POA, ASN, and 846 Inventory Position files only affect availability. Example: ONIX and EDI transmit List Price, but only ONIX changes the product. Beware the Sticky Records If critical title data like ISBN, Price, and Publication Date are changed more than 3 times, Amazon ignores future ONIX transmissions for that title. Was this a KDP/Amazon Advantage Book? Amazon does not easily re-link an Advantage or KDP book to your Vendor Code! Pro-actively file a support ticket. Dreaded Online Correction Form Any customer can report there is a mistake on a book record; Amazon often simply accepts the change instead of checking with supplier.
Oddities at Barnes & Noble Where did my product page go? New rule: If a book is not in-stock at time of Pub Date, product page disappears; can only be found by searching complete ISBN. In-stock at Ingram or B&T fixes B&N availability and restores page. Why is my book listed twice? Marketplace resellers often list with no ISBN, resulting in 2 nd page. Nothing to be done about it. (True also at Amazon) Why isn t the ebook rolled up? Good ONIX includes Related Titles, where the print edition is linked to the ebook edition. If not present, ebook is orphaned.
The Benefits of Using Title/Metadata Management Software Joshua Tallent Firebrand Technologies
1. Data entry kills productivity
2. Get everyone on the same page
3. Create better quality metadata
4. Create vendorspecific metadata
5. Keep up-to-date on standards
6. Make your workflow easier and faster
7. Expand your reach to new trading partners easily
8. Reporting keeps you informed and reveals opportunities
9. Integrate other systems for more power
10. Expand functionality beyond just metadata management
Lots of options
Leigh Grinstead, LYRASIS leigh.grinstead@lyrasis.org Joe Matthews, IPG jmatthews@ipgbook.com Larry Norton, INscribe Digital larry@inscribedigital.com Joshua Tallent, Firebrand Technologies joshua@firebrandtech.com Mark Ouimet, Ingram Content Group mark.ouimet@ingramcontent.com