In April 2009, EDItEUR announced the release of a major new version of the ONIX for Books standard: ONIX 3.0. This release of ONIX is the first since 2001 that is not backwards-compatible with its predecessors and, more importantly, provides a means for improved handling of digital products. During this Book Industry Study Group (BISG) webcast presentation, Mark Bide, Executive Director of EDItEUR, and David Martin, from EDItEUR's ONIX Support Team, answered four key questions about ONIX for Books 3.0: 1) Why did the book industry need a new ONIX release? 2) How does ONIX 3.0 provide new support for digital publishing? 3) What are other important benefits of ONIX 3.0? 4) How should publishers and other ONIX users respond to the new release?

1. This BISG WEBCAST took place Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 11:00 a.m. EDT.
To register for future BISG Webcasts, please visit:
http://www.bisg.org/event-cat-6-webcasts.php
To download further information about ONIX for Books, please visit:
http://www.bisg.org/what-we-do-21-15-onix-for-books.php
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2.  The U.S. book industry’s leading trade
association for policy, standards and research
 Develops and maintains standards and best
practices that support effective
communications between all parts of the
supply chain
 Conducts research and gathers data on issues
affecting the whole book industry
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3. Working to create a more
informed, empowered and efficient
book industry supply chain.
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4. David Martin, ONIX Support Team, EDItEUR Mark Bide, Executive Director, EDItEUR
David Martin is an independent consultant on Mark Bide is Executive Director of EDItEUR, the global
standards for business communication in the book trade standards organization responsible for the
trade, working principally for EDItEUR, where he maintenance and publication of ONIX for Books. He is
leads the team responsible for ONIX for Books. also the Project Director for the ACAP Project, and a
Director of Rightscom, the specialist media
David has been involved with metadata standards consultancy.
for most of his career, at INSPEC, at the British
Library, where he was Director of Automated Mark has worked in and around the publishing
Services for six years, and as a founder Director of industry for nearly 40 years, having been a Director
Book Data Ltd (now part of Nielsen BookData). of the European subsidiaries of both CBS Publishing
and John Wiley & Sons. He is a Visiting Professor of
the University of the Arts London.
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5.  London-based global trade standards
organization for books and serials supply chains
 Established 1991
 ONIX family of communications standards
 ONIX for Books
 ONIX for Serials
(online subscription products including ebooks)
 ONIX for Publication Licenses
 EDI
 RFID
 Secretariat for International ISBN Agency
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6.  The first standard in the ONIX family
 “ONline Information eXchange”
 Late 1990s
 AAP Digital Issues Working Group
 Response to growth in online book retailing
 Requirement for “rich product metadata” – never needed
in this form before
 Developed by EDItEUR in close collaboration
with BISG and BIC
 Now implemented very widely around the
world
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7.  Version history
 v1.0 2000 (no longer supported)
 v2.0 2001
 v2.1 2004 (retained backwards compatibility)
o Separation between structure and Codelists
o Codelist Issue 8
 Governed by International Steering Committee
 Representatives from the 15 countries which have local ONIX
committees
 ONIX standard is designed to be very widely applicable
 Local committees (including BISAC) work on implementation
guidelines appropriate to local market
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8.  Because our members (through the
International Steering Committee) told us you
needed a new release
 Primarily to provide better support for digital products
 Some other requirements could not be met by a 2.X
revision
 Decision taken to move to v3.0
 Extensive structural work
 No longer backwards compatible
 Shared Codelist with v2.1 (Issue 10)
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9. Including information on
digital products…
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10.  Removal of ‘deprecated’ elements
 Digital products (ebooks and more)
 Multiple-item products, sets and items in series
 ‘Marketing collateral’
 Market-specific data, for products sold internationally
 Breakdown of product records into ‘blocks’, to allow partial
updates
 New schema language options (RELAX NG)
 But where no change was needed – no change…
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11.  Product form
 DRM
 Usage constraints
 Distribution channels
 Covered in new guidelines, with examples
 to be published shortly on the EDItEUR website
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12.  ‘Epub’ elements in ONIX 2.1 have been scrapped
 Product form description for digital products is now
integrated with physical products in Product Form and
Product Form Detail coding
 Top-level <ProductForm> coding is based on delivery
method: ‘D’ codes for digital content delivered on a physical
carrier, ‘E’ codes for digital content accessed online or
delivered by download (also new ‘L’ codes for licences sold
separately)
 Format specified in <ProductFormDetail> (eg PDF, EPUB)
 Content specified in Product Content Type elements (text,
audio, video etc)
 ONIX 3.0 works best if ISBN guidelines are followed
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13.  New element <EpubTechnicalProtection>
 Enables DRM to be specified separately from format
(except where a proprietary format implies proprietary
DRM)
 Coded to specify (eg) ‘No DRM’, ‘Digital watermarking’,
‘Adobe DRM’ etc – more values will be added as required
 Example: ebook supplied as a download in EPUB format
with Adobe DRM:
<ProductForm>ED</ProductForm> Digital download
<ProductFormDetail>E101</ProductFormDetail> EPUB format
<EpubTechnicalProtection>03</EpubTechnicalProtection> Adobe DRM
<PrimaryContentType>10</PrimaryContentType> Text

14.  New elements added for optional encoding of a limited set of
usage constraints
 Usage type: eg preview, print extract, copy extract, share…
 Usage status: permitted without limit, permitted with limit,
prohibited
 Usage limit expressed quantitatively
 Example: preview permitted, up to 30 pages
<EpubUsageConstraint>
<EpubUsageType>01</EpubUsageType> Preview
<EpubUsageStatus>02</EpubUsageStatus> Permitted with limit
<EpubUsageLimit>
<Quantity>30</Quantity>
<EpubUsageUnit>04</EpubUsageUnit> Pages
</EpubUsageLimit>
</EpubUsageConstraint>

15.  Past ONIX releases assumed a physical supply chain:
publisher > wholesaler > retailer
 Variety of supply channels (and pricing models) for digital
products, eg:
publisher > consumer / publisher > library
packager > consumer / packager > library
selected wholesalers > retailers
selected retailers > consumer
 Handled in ONIX 3.0 by new guidelines and code values
rather than new elements
- The <Supplier> composite can now be coded to indicate a variety of ‘supplier
roles’
- Where pricing is too complex to be represented in ONIX, an item can be listed
without price, as ‘refer to supplier’

16.  An admitted problem area in past ONIX releases:
 sets, series, multi-media products, multiple copy packs
(classroom sets), trade packs (shrinkwraps), etc
 Problems of definition:
 Is this a set? a series? a pack? or what?
 Inconsistencies of description and encoding
 Repetition of title elements when a set or series
title is a necessary part of an individual product
title

17.  Radical simplification of approach in Release 3.0: forget
about ‘set’, ‘series’, ‘pack’ etc…
 Multiple-item product: any product made up of two or
more items
 Bibliographic collection: any collection of products with a
collective designation
 Not mutually exclusive
 Consistent approach to the description of any multiple-
item product, and any collection
 Collective (‘series’) title elements can be used as part of
product title without repetition
 New recognition of ‘publisher collections’ and ‘ascribed
collections’

18.  For more detail and examples, see How to describe
sets, series and multiple-item products in ONIX 3,
downloadable from the EDItEUR website
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19.  Publishers and others are using, and will use in future, a
much greater variety of supporting materials to promote
sales, particularly in the web environment
 Previous ONIX releases used:
 an <OtherText> composite to handle text content either as part of
the ONIX record itself or by links to text accessible elsewhere
 a <MediaFile> composite for links to non-text media, eg images
 Structures are too limited to meet current and future
requirements
 Rigid distinction between text and non-text media is
unhelpful
 Both composites have been removed and replaced

20.  Three new data element groups:
 <TextContent> is strictly for text which is carried within the ONIX
record, and which is made available for use by the receiver: short
and long descriptions, cover blurbs, review quotes etc
 <CitedContent> is for third-party content, in any medium, which
is cited by way of reinforcing the promotion of a product:
bestseller lists, TV or radio features, feature articles etc
 <SupportingResource> is for content, in any medium, which is
offered by the publisher (or sender of the ONIX record) to be used
by supply chain partners for promotional purposes, either by
downloading or linking: images, audio and video clips, widgets,
sample chapters

21.  <SupportingResource> is a generalised structure intended to
handle an unlimited variety of content and media types by
adding codes.
<SupportingResource>
<ResourceContentType> eg Front cover
<ContentAudience> eg Unrestricted
<ResourceMode> eg Image
<ResourceFeature> Composite: feature common to all versions
<ResourceVersion>
<ResourceForm> eg JPEG
<ResourceVersionFeature> Composite: version-specific, eg height in pixels
<ResourceLink> URI
<ContentDate> eg Date last modified
 In Code Lists Issue 10 we have not tried to fill the new code lists
with values that ‘might be needed’. Hence some lists are
evidently under populated. We expect to add to those lists in the
light of feedback from early implementers.

22.  Most English-language publishing (and Spanish-language
publishing) operates simultaneously in different national
or regional markets
 Publication dates, availability status, price and much else
are market-specific
 Some ONIX feeds relate only to a single marketplace,
some (e.g., to and from aggregators at an international
level) cover several markets
 Already partly recognised and supported in previous
releases – but, for example, a ‘global’ publication date
was assumed
 ONIX 3.0 goes a stage further, by regrouping supply-
related content into a new unified structure

23.  Full ONIX 3.0 specification, data element summary, and XML
technical notes published in April. Slightly revised versions
issued in July, correcting textual errors reported by users. Only
one change of substance: relaxation of one of the ‘rules’
associated with multiple-item products.
 DTD, XSL and RNG schemas also published in April. A small but
important amendment was made in July, to add a release number
attribute to the ONIX Message element.
 Code Lists Issue 10 was published in July: a further issue is likely
by 2010, if early implementers identify new requirements.
 Additional guidelines are being developed or are planned in a
number of areas: sets and series (already published), digital
products (due shortly), sending updates (consultation with
national groups about to start), and probably others.
 Any changes from here on will be backwards-compatible.

24. Keep these things in mind…
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25.  Not backwards compatible
 Requires more extensive system work than upgrade to 2.x
 Never a “right time”
 Particular challenge for data aggregators
 Support for multiple versions
 Input and output
 Essential for publishers who need better
support for communicating ebook metadata
 Important benefits for others, but less immediate pressure
 ONIX for Books 2.1 will continue to be supported, but future
development will build on 3.0

26. Now what?...
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27.  Attend BISG’s next ONIX Webcast: “Best
Practices for Implementation”
 Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 11:00am EDT
 Richard Stark, Director of Product Data, Barnes & Noble, Inc. and
Chair of BISAC Metadata Committee
 Update your company’s entry in BISG’s
ONIX Users Directory
http://www.bisg.org/directory/onix.php
 Implement ONIX for Books v3.0…

28. When does your company plan to implement
ONIX for Books 3.0?
RECEIVERS
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29.  We expect to be able to send ONIX files in early fall. (The target is
end of August but we probably won’t meet that.). It is especially
important to us in the digital product lines, but 3.0 also allows us to
convey some attributes that we have been gathering for years, but
couldn’t send anywhere.
 We will most likely move directly on to being able to process
inbound ONIX files in 3.0 but would not expect that task to be
finished until mid-late 1st qtr, 2010. A lot will depend on what the
publishers say. We cannot imagine requiring 3.0 from publishers for
the foreseeable future, although we will start encouraging its use as
soon as we have a clearer picture as to when we will be done.
 Wendell Lotz, VP Product Database Development, Ingram
www.ingrambook.com/start
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30.  We’ll have an ONIX 3.0 output by September 1st, 2009, though I
don’t expect transmission to anyone beyond the testing phase. It’s
our belief that no recipient will be accepting ONIX 3.0 until January
of 2010. If someone chooses to go live sooner, we’re happy to
accommodate.
 Greg Aden, President, NetRead
www.netread.com
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31. When does your company plan to implement
ONIX for Books 3.0?
SENDERS
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32.  We do NOT plan on looking at a 3.0 implementation schedule until
we get requests from some of the major recipients. So far, we have
not heard [from] anyone saying that they are interested in it. It’s not
on our radar for 2009.
 Fran Toolan, President, Firebrand Technologies
www.firebrandtech.com
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33.  We are looking at implementing both inbound and outbound ONIX
3.0 in 2010 but do not have a firm schedule at this time. Inbound
will be the priority for us to support our digital efforts, and to date
our data recipients have not communicated an urgency for 3.0.
 Sam Dempsey, VP Data Management & Development, Baker & Taylor
www.btol.com
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34. Presenter Contact Information
 David Martin: david@polecat.dircon.co.uk
 Mark Bide: mark@editeur.org
 Website: www.editeur.org
BISG Contact Information
 Michael Healy: michael@bisg.org
 Angela Bole: angela@bisg.org
 Website: www.bisg.org
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