A complete ONIX 3.0 editor in your browser. Twelve tabs covering every part of the message structure, every EDItEUR codelist current to Issue 73, schema-validated against the official XSD on every export. Yours to use whether you ever print with us or not.
If your books get into bookshops or libraries via Ingram, Gardners, NBN or anyone in the trade, you already know this routine. The work doesn't add reader-facing value — but it has to happen.
Your current metadata software runs in the background, costs more than the average book makes in a quarter, and exists to do one job: turn the data you already have into an XML file your distributor will accept.
If you're not paying for software, you're hand-coding ONIX in a spreadsheet, running it through a free converter, then praying the validator accepts it. Three hours of cognitive overhead that adds nothing to the book.
Different distributors want different ONIX flavours. A record that passes Ingram's validator might fail Gardners. A field that's optional in 3.0.7 becomes required in a later release. The chase is on you.
From signup to a valid ONIX 3.0 file in under an hour. Save and pick up anywhere — your work autosaves per tab.
Email and password, that’s it. No print order required, no monthly fee, no payment details.
The 13-digit ISBN your registry has issued. We create your draft record instantly with the ProductIdentifier composites pre-built.
Header, Record, Product Form, Title, Contributors, Edition, Subjects, Marketing, Publishing, Related, Supply & Pricing, Review & Export. At your own pace.
Schema-checked against EDItEUR’s official ONIX 3.0.8 XSD on every export. The XML file is yours — submit to Nielsen, your distributor, retail chains.
Every tab does real work. No “coming soon” placeholders inside the editor itself, no half-built fields. Below is what’s actually there today.
Header, Record, Product Form, Title, Contributors, Edition & Language, Subjects, Marketing, Publishing, Related, Supply & Pricing, Review & Export.
Issue 73 (April 2026). Twenty-five-plus numbered lists bundled, refreshed when EDItEUR ships a new Issue.
Validates against the official EDItEUR ONIX 3.0.8 XSD before serving. A malformed file never leaves the system.
Choose the canonical 510-element flavour your distributor prefers. Both pass XSD validation.
Marketing copy and biographical notes accept paragraph breaks and inline italics. Auto-tagged textformat=“05”.
Author, editor, illustrator, translator, more. ISNI / ORCID / proprietary IDs, websites, place, professional affiliation.
Rights type per territory plus a rest-of-world fallback. Multi-region splits supported in one record.
Reviews with quote attribution, Cited Content, Prizes (List 41), Related Products, Prices in any currency, with returns conditions.
Per-tab autosave. Walk away mid-record, come back next week, pick up where you left off. Completion bar tracks your progress.
"Three reasons. None of them require you to print with us."
One. We make our living on print, not metadata. ONIX doesn’t need to be a revenue line for us, and we’d rather have publishers in our system early — at the metadata stage — than try to charge a small fee that puts a barrier in front of you.
Two. The data is yours. The format is open (EDItEUR ONIX 3.0 is an international standard with no licence fee). The tooling should be too. Charging a publisher to produce a standard XML file out of facts they already know feels like rent-seeking.
Three. Imprint Academic, our publishing parent, has been generating ONIX records for over twenty years — until recently on a paid metadata tool. They’ve now switched their production pipeline to this editor. Opening the same tool up to other publishers costs us roughly nothing on top.
If you eventually want to print with us too, that’s the long game and we’d be glad to have you. If you never do, the editor is still yours to use.
ONIX 3.0 is the international standard maintained by EDItEUR. We generate one canonical record per title — the same XML works across every UK and Republic of Ireland trade distributor, plus the major retailers ingesting metadata directly.
Largest book wholesaler globally; trade distribution + IngramSpark
● CompatibleUK's primary independent bookshop wholesaler
● CompatibleGlobal English-language distribution + sales rep
● CompatibleLong-standing UK trade distributor
● CompatibleAcademic + scholarly distribution specialist
● CompatibleEdinburgh-based independent distributor
● CompatibleTitle registries — the spine of the trade
● CompatibleAmazon, Waterstones, Blackwell's metadata feeds
● CompatibleHow it works: ONIX 3.0 is a single open standard. The same record format is accepted by every distributor on this list. v1 of our editor delivers a clean canonical record — you download the XML and submit it to your distributor through whichever channel they use (FTP, web upload, email, partner portal). Minor distributor-specific tweaks, if any, are easy to handle on the receiving end.
Imprint Academic Ltd
has been pushing ONIX records
to distributors since the early 2000s.
Imprint Digital is the trade-printing arm of Imprint Academic Ltd — a long-established UK academic publisher and our parent company. The academic side has been generating ONIX 3.0 records and pushing them through to Ingram, Gardners, NBN and academic library distributors for over twenty years.
Until recently that workflow ran on a paid metadata tool — the same kind of specialist SaaS we’d otherwise be competing against. They’ve now switched their production pipeline to this editor. Same record format, same field mappings, same distributor relationships behind it — just running on a tool we built ourselves.
That’s the validation we’d offer prospects: not “we built a thing, please try it,” but “our sister publisher dropped a paid metadata subscription to use this in production.” If it carries an academic publisher’s catalogue through the trade, it carries yours.
v1 is "minimum viable record that distributors accept." Below is the honest list of what's deliberately out of scope at launch — so you can decide upfront whether v1 covers what you need, or whether you'll keep your existing tool for some workflows.
Yes. The editor is open to anyone with a Hub account. There’s no print-readiness check, no “you have to submit a quote first” gate, no monthly fee that sneaks in once you’ve filled out a record. Print runs are how we earn a living; ONIX is the front door we leave unlocked because we’d rather have publishers in our system early than charge a small fee that scares them off.
Yes — and we prove it on every export. The XML is validated against EDItEUR’s official ONIX 3.0.8 XSD before it ever leaves the server. If the file fails validation, you get a structured error list with line numbers, not a malformed download. Both reference-name and short-tag flavours pass, on the same record. Imprint Academic, our publishing parent, has been pushing ONIX 3.0 to distributors for over twenty years — and just switched their production workflow from their paid metadata tool to this editor. The same field mappings, distributor relationships and validator-rejection scars now run through the editor in production.
Yes to all. The Product Form tab covers paperback, hardback, board books, picture books, academic monographs and more (List 150 + List 175 from EDItEUR). The Contributors tab supports unlimited contributors with structured names, ISNI / ORCID identifiers, biographical notes, places, websites. Subjects tab covers Thema (primary + secondary + qualifiers), BIC, BISAC, Dewey, plus your own keywords. Marketing tab handles multi-paragraph blurbs, reviews with quote attribution, prizes, and image URLs for cover, back, and full jacket. If your distributor accepts ONIX 3.0, your book fits.
Wherever your distributor wants it. Most accept ONIX via FTP, web upload portal, email, or partner channel — they’ll have told you which when you signed up with them. The XML file we produce is the canonical record; the same file works for Nielsen / Bowker, Ingram, Gardners, NBN, Marston, BookSource, Macmillan Distribution, and direct retailer feeds (Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwell’s). We don’t push it for you yet — you download and submit. That’s in the “What’s not in v1” section above for a reason.
Audit what features you actually use first. If your current tool is doing multi-user editorial approval queues with sign-off chains, change tracking across versions, or pushing direct to twelve distributor APIs, our editor won’t replace all of it. For most small publishers the workflow is “produce a valid record, send it to my distributor” — and that’s exactly what we do. The £30–£200/month becomes a quick saving. Bring your existing records over manually for now (XML import is on the roadmap; not in v1).
Your records are yours. The editor downloads schema-valid ONIX 3.0 XML for any record any time, no quotas, no notice. We’d rather you have a frictionless exit than be locked in by data you put in. The XML format is open and readable by every other ONIX tool; nothing you produce here is in a proprietary lock-in shape.
There genuinely isn’t one for v1. The honest footnote is that if abuse appears — bot-driven signups, automated record-spam, that kind of thing — we may add light usage caps or a verification step. We don’t expect to need to. If we do, the changes will be telegraphed clearly and won’t affect anyone using the tool in good faith.
No rush — ONIX stays free either way. But if you’re already weighing up a printer move, the full case is on a dedicated page. Invoice match-and-beat, free 100-copy test print, file-extraction help, a five-minute backlist import. Three risk-free first moves, no commitment.
No print order required, no payment details, no calendar booking. Sign up, enter an ISBN, start filling tabs. Walk away mid-record and pick up next week — your work autosaves.
Start your first ONIX record →