Catalog Admin – ONIX Tips

  • We support ONIX 2.1 and ONIX 3.
  • Feel free to post complete ONIX files occasionally and delta (change) files between the full files. You are only charged for the titles you catalog in Edelweiss. One key benefit of sending data through complete ONIX files every now and then is that you will have access to all of the title content if you add these ISBNs as comps or related products.
  • The only file naming requirement that our automatic ONIX processor has is that the “.xml” file extension must be lower case.
  • All of your ONIX files must be named consistently, always beginning with the same name/word, e.g. ‘[Short name of your company]_[Date].xml.’ Or ‘[Short name of your company]_print_[Date].xml’ vs. [Short name of your company]_ebooks_[Date].xml’. Please work out these naming conventions with your Edelweiss account manager when your account is first set-up.
  • Be sure to post each ONIX file to your /ONIX/ FTP folder.
  • We process new ONIX files every night, starting at around 8:00 PM U.S. EST; once your file is processed, it will be moved automatically into the /ONIX/processed folder. Please DO NOT place your ONIX files directly into the processed folder.
  • We can accept ONIX .zip files, but please confirm your file name and format when you first establish your account with us.
  • If you are changing the format of your ONIX file (e.g. switching from short to reference or vice versa, or are adding/changing specific ONIX tags), please contact support@abovethetreeline.com with those details. We will need to reconfigure your account on our end to ensure a smooth transition.
  • Our ONIX processor doesn’t recognize ANSI characters, so all HTML coding must fully conform to the encoding scheme identified in your ONIX file (e.g. UTF-8). If your diacritical and special/foreign characters do not appear correctly in Edelweiss, it’s most likely because the code for those characters is not a UTF-8 code. The following link takes you to a few different UTF-8 General Punctuation character sets that could be used in order to display properly in HTML5 and Edelweiss:  http://www.w3schools.com/charsets/ref_utf_punctuation.asp
  • At this time, Edelweiss only supports Latin characters.
  • At this time, we also strip out all em- and en-dash coding that comes through ONIX feeds as a part of our special HTML Tidy process, which otherwise cleans up incomplete HTML encoding.
  • If your company publishes titles with what are essentially publisher or imprint names as the primary contributor (e.g. Lonely Planet), include this as the <CorporateName> ONIX Contributor in your ONIX feed. The Short tag is <b047>. Please email Support@abovethetreeline.com to ask us to configure your ONIX processing to begin ingesting these values. Retailers who export their Edelweiss orders to their POS systems will appreciate you making the change, as those corporate names will appear correctly in their system: e.g. as Lonely Planet rather than Planet, Lonely.
  • Below is a list of ONIX OtherText Description Codes Mapped to Edelweiss Title Descriptions, aka Marketing Content:

ONIX CodeValue & Description > Edelweiss Description
01 Main description > Edelweiss Long Description/Overview Summary
02 Short description/annotation > Edelweiss Keynote (which appears in the top of the Edelweiss Title Summary section)
03 Long description > Edelweiss Long Description/Overview Summary
04 Table of contents > Edelweiss Table of Contents
05 Review quote, restricted length
06 Quote from review of previous edition > Edelweiss Quotes/Reviews
07 Review text > Edelweiss Quotes/Reviews
08 Review quote > Edelweiss Quotes/Reviews
09 Promotional ’headline’
10 Previous review quote > Edelweiss Quotes/Reviews
11 Author comments
12 Description for reader
13 Biographical note > Edelweiss Bio Note
14 Description for Reading Group Guide
15 Discussion question for Reading Group Guide
16 Competing titles
17 Flap copy
18 Back cover copy
19 Feature > Edelweiss Key Selling Points
20 New feature
21 Publisher’s notice
23 Excerpt from book > Edelweiss Excerpt
24 First chapter
25 Description for salespeople > We can set this one up to map to the Edelweiss Key Selling Points
26 Description for press or other media > We can set this one up to map to Edelweiss Marketing Plans (as of Feb 2015)
27 Description for subsidiary rights department
28 Description for teachers/educators
30 Unpublished endorsement > Edelweiss Unpublished Endorsements
31 Description for bookstore
32 Description for library
33 Introduction or preface
34 Full text
35 Promotional text > We can set this one up to map to the Edelweiss Marketing Plans
40 Author interview / Q&A
41 Reading Group Guide
42 Commentary / discussion