Everything You Thought You Knew About Metadata…
This arrangement made reasonably good sense in the world before the Internet. It doesn't make sense today. As I know publishers have no intention of discontinuing the practice, all that can be asked is that they think hard about the metadata. ONIX offers fields that define the situation. You must specify in which countries you hold rights and chase etailers that ignore your specification.
4. Enhanced metadata matters
As we point out in The Metadata Handbook the term "enhanced" when used with "metadata" is—like the term "basic"—also subject to variations from one national agency to the next. It's best just to think the term through logically. If basic metadata includes the descriptive elements, how can you enhance that "data?" We list several choices, some of them obvious:
● Tables of contents
● Author and contributor biographies and interviews
● Digital images beyond the cover image
● Video trailers and author interview on video
● Podcasts
One way to think of it is that basic metadata brings customers into the store while enhanced metadata closes the sale.
You think you're advanced.
You're in charge of data services for a mid-size publisher, or maybe larger. Metadata is a core responsibility, and yours alone. Did you know:
1. You need to get to work with ONIX 3
Metadata has a standard. It's called ONIX. Most publishers are not using any version of it. Those that use ONIX are usually using version 2.1, released in 2004. They're not yet using version 3.0, released in 2009.
Version 3.0 was established mainly because of the "need to improve the handling of digital products." Digital products are routinely 20 percent of publisher sales, but publishers are describing their products with an older metadata standard designed for print.
Thad McIlroy is an electronic publishing consultant, analyst and author, and principal of The Future of Publishing. Since 1988, Thad McIlroy has provided consulting services to publishing and media companies, printers, prepress shops, design and advertising agencies, as well as vendors serving the publishing industry.
