Absurdity

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The book as a thing in itself

I have worked in publishing technology for more years than I care to remember and in those years have heard all kinds of prophecies about the form of the book in years to come. Many I am pleased to say have gone the way of the Dodo. I am firmly of the belief that with all the options technology gives us still the best way of delivering (in the vast majority of cases) is in the traditional book form (portable, robust, requires no batteries and with a flexible DRM).

Anyway, a blog (again, my incredible wife sent it to me) which contains lots of happy browsing for those of love the physicality of books may be found at CaiLun.info.

CaiLun.info

As a side note if like us you love books in all their forms you could do a lot worse than check out the London Artists Bookfair held usually at the ICA in London around the end of November.

Filed under: Art, Publishing

Onix isn’t just for sending … (Part Two)

Again many thanks to the quite frankly marvelous Snowbooks in London (http://www.snowbooks.com). Again, demonstrating that once you have broken the back of sorting your title information to comply with the Onix standard all kinds of things are possible. The standard Onix compliant XML file generated at the click of a button by the Anko Publishing Manager can be used to generate AIs, order forms and just about any other template driven document using your bibliographic information that you can imagine.

The Anko Publishing Manager is freely available to download from http://anko.ie.

You can, for example, with the help of a little XSLT generate the pages for your website (click on image to view at 100%) …

Filed under: Uncategorized

Causing constant merriment in our house …

A big bunny

Filed under: Uncategorized

Amazon force the Onix issue?

Had been talking to some people within Amazon who suggested that they were looking at some pricing restrictions to push publishers maybe towards having to supply them just Onix files if they wanted their titles on Amazon.

The Anko Title Manager is always updated to include any and all specific Amazon requirements and by a factor of many (many!) times the most affordable (and complete) bibliographic database out there which enabling publishers to supply Onix just how Amazon likes it. You may freely download a demo at http://anko.ie.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Continuing the sky theme

My wife sent me this incredible shot of the sky at sunset – Looks like really could be in the middle of nowhere instead of just on the edge of Stockholm city centre – My wife always has stuff to inspire. Stockholm feeling very different as days getting lighter and longer.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Onix 2.1 revision 03

The Onix standard was slightly revised today (don’t worry the Anko Publishing Manager has it covered!): The text of the announcement is as follows:

‘ONIX for Books Release 2.1 revision 03
—————————————-

This is to announce that Release 2.1 revision 03 of ONIX for Books is now available for downloading from the EDItEUR website. Revision 03 adds a very small number of new elements in Groups PR.24 and PR.26 that have been requested to support specific requirements of the
Australian and Spanish ONIX implementations, so that they can proceed without waiting for a Release 3.0.

The opportunity has also been taken to make some small corrections and improvements to the documentation. There is one correction to the DTD: a minor unintended restriction in Group PR.18 has been removed. If you do not use Group PR.18, or you haven’t noticed the restriction in the existing DTD, it is safe to assume that your implementation will not be affected.

Note also that the documentation package for Revision 03 no longer includes the separate record types for Main Series and Subseries. These were originally added to support a specific application in Germany, and we believe they have not been adopted elsewhere. The German ONIX group has advised us that they are not now required. In the interests of backwards compatibility, they remain available in the current DTDs and Schema, but we expect that they will be removed from Release 3.0. If you know of any current application that is using either or both of them, please let us know as soon as possible.

Revision 03 maintains full backwards compatibility with previous releases. Most ONIX national groups have indicated that they will not use the added elements, but will await the next full ONIX Release. You may wish to download the documentation in order to ensure that you are using the most up-to-date version for reference, but you should not need to take any other action. You do NOT need to change the release number in the message header.

The full Product Record Specification and DTD list the changes in Revision 03. The Code Lists remain those of Issue 5. No firm date has been set for Issue 6, but in the normal course of events we would expect it to be around June 2006, depending on the level and urgency of demand for new code values.’

Filed under: Uncategorized

What cross-platform means

Our software has always run natively on both the Windows PC and every incarnation of Mac OS from 8.6 through to the present day. The reason for this? Quite simply because it was and remains the case that the majority of publishers have a mixture of Macs and PCs and since they are our customers it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to only allow half a company access to the their information. Especially, as one of the key benefits of such a solution as the Anko Publishing Manager is that all the information related to the process of publishing is all in one place for everyone to work with.

That is cross- platform!

What cross-platform isn’t is a Macintosh accessing a Windows based application through Apple Remote Desktop. This believe it or not is what our competitors at Focus on Publishing in London think constitutes offering a Mac compatible publishing system. Words fail me.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Anko Onix is mostly going to …

A quick survey of the clients reveals the following to be the most common Onix recipients for Anko clients using our title management solutions:

Nielsen Bookdata (UK); Bowker (US); Bowker (UK); Login Brothers (Canada); Library of Congress (US); Indigo (Canada); Ingram (US); Barnes & Noble (US); Amazon (US); Baker & Taylor (US); Powell’s (US); Random House (USA)

Filed under: Uncategorized

Anko Publishing Manager 2006 now available

After lots of hard work and many late nights and weekend trying to cram in as much new functionality as possible and of course ensuring the world’s most complete Onix database (and by some margin it’s most affordable) is now out in the world.

If you want to check out the best book publishing management software that any money can buy then you may download a free demo from the website at http://anko.ie.

Really pleased that we have such a good cross section of the publishing world – large and small and from just about every market sector as this little snapshot shows.

Users of Anko Software include: Turnaround Distribution (London, UK); STL Distribution (Georgia, USA); Blauburg Verlag (Frieburg, Germany); Salina Bookshelf (Flagstaff, USA); Ulster Historical Society (Ulster, UK); Bible Reading Fellowship (Oxford, UK), Chelsea Green (Vermont, USA), Crabtree Publishing (Toronto, Canada); Creative Publishing International (Chanhassen, USA); Crowood Press (Ramsbury, UK); Edward Elgar (Cheltenham, UK); Focus Publishing (Newburyport, USA); GMB Publishing (London, UK); I.B Tauris (London, UK); Industrial Press (New York, USA); International Monetary Fund Publishing (Washington DC, USA); Biblio Bazaar (South Carolina, USA); Minerva Group (Miami, USA); Kent State University Press (Kent, USA); Luath Press (Edinburgh, UK); Lutterworth Press (Cambridge, UK); McGill Queen’s Universoty Press (Montreal, Canada); Morgan Claypool (Colorado, USA); MQ Publications (London, UK and New York, USA); Pindar Press (Cambridge, UK); Purdue University Press (West Lafayette, USA); Royal Society of Chemistry (Cambridge, UK); Scripture Union (Milton Keynes, UK); Searchpress (Tunbridge Wells, UK); SIS Com (Milan, Italy); Snow Books (London, UK); Stanford University Press (Stanford, USA); Workman Publishing (New York, USA).

Filed under: Uncategorized

Onix and publicity information

Arrived back in Europe to dramatic early morning sky over the west coast of Ireland. Having spent the crossing from JFK pondering how to deal more effectively with informing on-line retailers and other trading partners about publicity events and other information related to a title.

Many of my publishers raised that they felt the Onix specification was inadequate in terms of the information it allowed them to send regarding publicity related to a title. The Campaign Information field not really covering it for them. In particular they wanted to send information about author tours; publicity events and so on. It was felt that the sales promotion elements could do with being beefed up quite substantially.

Will write more on this when have thought through a possible specification in more detail.

Filed under: Uncategorized

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