The ONIX Odyssey
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (OCTOBER 2002)
Twelve
bucks a title. That’s how much Barnes & Noble
has suggested it will charge publishers if they don’t
beef up their title information feeds to the nation’s
largest bookseller. Over the summer, B&N, having
announced its data-streamlining partnership with Bowker,
marched 40 of its largest suppliers into its offices
and delivered the dreaded ultimatum: by November 1,
transmit 11 key data points via Bowker, six months before
a pub date, or pay the piper for the service of key-punching
that missing data. “I don’t anticipate that we’re going
to turn on the switch on that date,” explains Joseph
Gonnella, B&N’s VP of Inventory Management and
Publisher Relations. “Our impression is that most of
the publishers have the ability to get us what we’re
looking for six months in advance.”
Supposing Riggio and company make good on their
word, they may be collecting a tidy pile of cash. That’s
because B&N has made a strong case for transmitting
title data via ONIX — short for Online Information
Exchange — and to date, only about 25 publishers are
distributing ONIX files. Perhaps that explains the air
of desperate befuddlement at last month’s full-day seminar
on the ONIX standard, sponsored by the Book Industry
Study Group and NYU. Much wild scribbling
was in evidence when Andrew Porter, Manager of
Digital Content for Harcourt’s trade division,
told the crowd about his two-year-old ONIX odyssey,
which meant consolidating 40 databases around the company,
and, despite much progress, remains an ongoing effort.
The really unfortunate news? Judging by the audience’s
queries, Harcourt may be light years ahead of other
major publishers.
Better news is that when finally deployed, ONIX actually
works. As a system for transferring descriptive information
from publisher to retailer/wholesaler to consumer, ONIX
is an expansion of the original BISAC/BASIC code, designed
to transmit information needed to sell a title, from
author, ISBN, and price to more complex data such as
jacket art, author bio, and reviews. And with the release
of ONIX Version 2.0,
the available information fields have been expanded.
The university presses represented at the session were
relieved to find that listing a work with multiple editions,
multiple volumes, and Greek on one page and English
on another was within the standard’s scope.
In his introduction, Fran Toolan of Quality
Solutions, a provider of software and services
to the publishing industry, noted disappointment that
ONIX adoption has moved slowly since Pat Schroeder
declared almost three years ago that this was to
be an AAP priority. As B&N’s Gonnella tells
PT, however: “The structure should be consistent
with the ONIX standard, but we’ve made it clear that
we’d take things by carrier pigeon.” He also stresses,
“We’ve been pleased to see the degree that publishers
have embraced ONIX.” As they struggle toward compliance,
some publishers have happily farmed out their data headache.
Toolan’s company processes ONIX files for about 8 publishers,
and one such client is Scholastic, whose databases
are currently undergoing a major overhaul with the possible
aim of using ONIX in-house. “We’re trying to design
our databases so that they can capture the information
ONIX needs,” says Neil De Young, Scholastic’s
Business Information Manager. “For the most part, everyone
recognizes the concept and the need.” Given the challenge
of dragging one’s troops into line so that title information
is entered uniformly from the moment a book is signed
up, one might well ask: Is ONIX worth the effort? “In
the long run, I’m not necessarily sure it’s going to
save anyone money,” says De Young. “But it’s going to
present information the right way, which in theory should
make more money.”
©2002
Publishing Trends
