Calibre & ONIX metadata

[Fabe]

I've just been asked to submit my epub file along with "metadata in the form of ONIX (xml)." I have no idea what ONIX is, but a little searching revealed it is used in the publishing industry and may come from the Library of Congress dreaded (by me) MARC system.

So, what is ONIX and how do I create a metadata file for it, of it, by it?

I am hoping for the, "No worries mate, Calibre generates that automatically" answer.

Thanks - Fabe

[kovidgoyal]

Sorry never heard of ONIX

Out of curiosity, who's asking for it?

[Fabe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Sorry never heard of ONIX

Out of curiosity, who's asking for it?

LibreDigital is asking for it. They are one of Apple's iBook aggregators.

This web site, Metadata Reference Guide, from the MIT Libraries explains it.

I will email my rep at LibreDigital on Monday for more details and pass along what I find out. - Fabe

[Fabe]

Below is the response I received from my distributor this morning about "providing metadata in the form of ONIX (xml)."

Apple requires all metadata be submitted in the form of xml. Here are a few references for you.

There are a few companies out there that will convert (for a fee) like BookNet Canada (FREE tool allows you to convert data in Excel to ONIX): http://www.booknetcanada.ca/index.ph...153&Itemid=407 And http://www.firebrandtech.com/solutio...e-for-onix.php Will convert for a FEE.

I have not looked into these links yet, but I believe all Apple wants is an XML file. My question to the distributor, which they did not answer was, what metadata items do you want? I will follow up with my rep and ask her to consult her IT people and in-house counsel for guidance.

More to come - Fabe

[st_albert]

Just to add my $0.02, I'll give the executive summary from a book publisher's perspective.

When someone submits a book for publication to a distributor, they must provide the metadata (e.g. publisher, title, isbn, countries covered, author and contributor data, descriptions (short and long), price, and I don't know what else.

Commonly, these are provided via an Excel spreadsheet (whose format varies per distributor), OR, an ONIX file (which is an xml file following the ONIX specifications).

Obviously a publisher would prefer to provide ONIX data (in a standard format) to all the distributors, rather than having to prepare individual excel spreadsheets for each.

Thus it would be awesome if Calibre (which already can read the metadata from, say, an epub, and print it), could also convert it into the ONIX XML format. That would save a great amount of double- or triple- or multiple keyboarding in the course of distributing ebooks.

As an aside:
I had initially inquired in the Sigil forum about adding this facility to Sigil but it is kind of peripheral to Sigil's function as an epub editor. Jellby suggested the Calibre forum might be more appropriate, and -- lo and behold -- there is already a thread about it.

I would love to see such a utility added to Calibre! AFIK there isn't anything similar available at present (that is, epub metadata -> ONIX file).

Albert

[kovidgoyal]

It should be fairly simple to implement a plugin to do that, it's not something I am interested in personally, but maybe someone else will take you up on it.