Media & Publishing · Book Publishing
A book is one record. Nine retailers shouldn't each hold a different one.
We build the title record, the rights model, and the feeds that keep every edition, price, territory, and pub date agreeing with each other, across retail, wholesale, libraries, and the aggregators nobody has time to email.
The Long Field
Marguerite Enderby · Hardcover · 384pp
Editions
Territories
This record feeds
Cover updated on the record. Nine retail feeds and the library catalog picked it up within the hour
How many places would a pub-date change have to be typed in your house?
Where a list loses its grip
Five ways one title becomes nine versions of itself
Metadata lives in nine spreadsheets and one memory
Editorial, sales, rights, and production each keep their own version of the title, and the retailer gets whichever one was sent last.
A pub date moves and nobody agrees about it
The date slips six weeks and the retailer, the pre-order page, and the catalog are all still carrying the old one.
Rights are a filing cabinet
Which territory, which format, which term, and when it reverts: none of it is queryable, so the same right gets sold twice.
The backlist is invisible
Thousands of titles that would still sell are undiscoverable because their records were never enriched.
Royalties are reconciled by hand
Sales come in from a dozen channels in a dozen shapes, and somebody spends every quarter turning them into statements.
Every one of these is a retyping problem wearing a different hat.
The list
A publishing year is four seasons and everything behind them
And the backlist behind them: 2,400 titles that keep selling if anyone can find them.
What we build
The systems a house runs a list on
Title management & metadata
One record per title, with every edition, price, and description attached, feeding every retailer and library system from the same place.
978-1-8391-4402-7
Every edition on one record: edited once, fed everywhere.
Rights & permissions
Territory, format, term, and reversion held as data you can query, so nobody sells the same right twice or forgets a license that lapsed.
Queryable, so a conflicting deal is caught before it's signed.
Retail & library distribution
Feeds to retailers, wholesalers, libraries, and aggregators that update the moment the record does.
Connected to the production, sales, and royalty systems you already run. The record becomes the thing they all agree about.
Sales, royalties & backlist discovery
Channel sales reconciled into royalty statements, and a backlist enriched enough that readers can actually find it.
Connected to the production, sales, and royalty systems you already run. The record becomes the thing they all agree about.
Date changed on the record
14 Oct becomes 25 Nov. One field, one place, with a reason attached.
Conflicts checked first
Two territory licenses and an audio window are dated against the old release. Both flagged before anything goes out.
Retail feeds regenerated
Nine accounts, two wholesalers, and four aggregators receive the corrected ONIX.
Library catalog updated
The record in the library system moves with the retail feeds, the same day instead of two weeks later.
Pre-orders and the site follow
Pre-order customers are notified, and the title page, catalog, and rep materials all carry 25 Nov.
Flagship · the date change
A lead title moves six weeks, and everyone hears about it before lunch
A pub date is the field most likely to move and the one most expensive to move badly. Here it changes once, the license windows it would break are checked before anything is sent, and nine retail accounts, two wholesalers, the library catalog, and every pre-order all agree about 25 November by half past nine.
- Changes a pub date in one place and pushes it to every account that carries the title
- Checks rights and territory windows for conflicts before the change goes anywhere
- Regenerates ONIX for retailers, wholesalers, libraries, and aggregators together
- Leaves an audit trail: what changed, who changed it, and where it landed
An invitation
Bring the title whose date moved twice
The record above is illustrative. Put a real title through it (the edition that was missing from one retailer, the license nobody checked, the date the catalog never caught up with) and see where the manual retyping stops.
Connects to your stack
It speaks the trade's standards and your systems
Standards it speaks
Systems we connect
Retail & wholesale
Accounts receive the record and its updates on their own schedule and in their own shape.
Libraries & aggregators
Library systems and metadata services read the same record, with no separate export to maintain.
Production & assets
Covers, samples, and interiors live with the title record, off the shared drive.
Sales & royalties
Channel sales come back in, reconcile against the title, and become statements.
How it runs
From one title we followed to a list that agrees with itself
Follow one title through the house
We trace a book from acquisition to backlist: every spreadsheet, every retype, and every place its date has to be repeated.
Make the title record canonical
One record holds every edition, price, description, and asset, and it's the only thing anyone edits.
Attach the rights
Territory, format, term, and reversion become queryable data, checked automatically before a change goes out.
Feed the trade and open the backlist
Retail, wholesale, library, and aggregator feeds run off the record, and the backlist gets enriched enough to be found.
Your production, sales, and royalty systems stay where they are.
What changes
A list where the record and the retailer say the same thing
One record, every account
Retailers, libraries, and aggregators all read from the same title, so the description they show is the one you wrote.
A date change stops being a week of email
The pub date moves once and reaches every account, catalog, and pre-order the same morning.
Rights stop being a filing cabinet
Territory, term, and reversion are queryable, so a conflict is caught before the contract is signed.
The backlist becomes findable again
Thousands of titles that never stopped selling get metadata good enough for a reader to reach them.
Bars are illustrative. They show relative emphasis, not measured results.
Questions
What houses ask first
Do you generate ONIX?
Yes. ONIX 3.0 out of the title record, with the account-specific variations different retailers and aggregators expect. The record is edited once and the feeds follow from it.
How are rights and territories handled?
As data you can query. Territory, format, term, and reversion date sit on the title, so a conflicting sub-rights deal is caught before it's agreed.
What happens when a pub date moves?
It changes in one place. Conflicts against license windows are checked first, then retail, wholesale, library, and aggregator feeds regenerate, and pre-orders and the site follow the same morning.
Can you help with the backlist?
That's often where the return is. Enriching old records with proper subjects, descriptions, and assets makes titles discoverable again, and titles that never stopped selling start being found.
Do we have to replace our existing systems?
Usually not. The title record connects to the production, sales, and royalty systems you already run. It becomes the thing they all agree about, and none of them gets replaced.
Anything not covered here, we work through in the first session.
Related services
The systems underneath the record
Elsewhere in media
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