How to use RSS

To be the first to know about new blog posts from Consonance (I know! It is exciting, you’re right...

GraphQL at Christmas

Pretty exciting times over here at Consonance Towers, as we gear up for the launch of our new metadata...

Unshackle your data and free your time with GraphQL

It’s 2022 and instead of technology making your job easier it’s just adding another layer of inescapable...

The insiders' guide to an ONIX file

There’s a new way of seeing your previous ONIX in Consonance. It’s called the ONIX fragments page...

774 new Thema subject codes

The latest Thema updates have been released with 744 new codes, bringing the total to 6,748, and are...

The ONIX Standard is not very standard

Here at Consonance we send ONIX to over a hundred recipients, and I think it’s fair to say that no...

Publishers hack their own bibliographic data

Well, that’s an intriguing headline.

Perhaps an even more stunning headline is Publishers Hack Their...

Why incremental ONIX changes are best, and hard

When first discussing an ONIX feed with a potential recipient, amid all of the minutiae of their preferences...

How to create a catalogue automatically using ONIX and InDesign

Did you go into publishing so that you could spend your days copying and pasting ever-changing metadata...

How APIs can make publishing more efficient

As a rule, application programming interfaces, or APIs, aren’t easy to talk about.

For instance,...

Three ways to do more with ONIX

A quick primer: ONIX is a list of tags that we in the book trade have agreed to use to describe our...

A publisher’s guide to APIs

API is one of those acronyms you hear bandied about. “APIs”, people say, “are vital. Vital!” But if...

Liverpool University Press

We have had the pleasure of working with LUP since 2015 when they migrated to us from a legacy platform...

New

Book Dash

In 2014, a group of friends with a background in publishing launched Book Dash in South Africa. Their...

Bedford Square Publishers

Bedford Square Publishers, rooted in the rich history of London and Brighton’s Bedford Square, has...

Leuven University Press

Established in 1971, Leuven University Press’ foundation goes hand in hand with the long-standing...

Zed Books

Zed Books had a storming year in 2017. In this post, we explain how Consonance played a part in their...

IOP Publishing

We were extremely excited to hear from IOP Publishing. Science publishers do vital and inspiring work...

Discussions in Consonance

When the lockdown started, one of our first remotely-held planning meetings was to brainstorm what...

The hidden dangers of spreadsheets

A cannabis-growing firm recently had to issue an embarrassing correction to the financial authorities...

Ruby code and why you should care

Ruby is the primary programming language that Consonance is written in, chosen for its readability...

How many authors is too many?

How big is your company’s contact database? How many authors has your company ever published? How...

This is not the formulaic project management of other industries

As publishers ourselves, we know that one of the big challenges of running your company is to manage...

Advanced advance information!

If you are a Consonance client, you have always been able to click a button to download your metadata...

Hidden benefits of a single source of bibliographic truth

I’ve noticed an interesting side-effect to using Consonance. If you use one of the features that presents...

So where are we with the frontlist?

It's the question everyone in publishing dreads.

Like Anna, an editorial assistant...

A quick look at data visualisation and analysis

I’ve recently been harking back to my roots as a veteran Business Intelligence architect, which was...

The search for publishing's holy grails

‘Ask me the questions, bridgekeeper. I am not afraid’

There are certain enigmas in publishing, certain...

The real price of a strategy shift

Whatever your strategy, you need to pay a “strategy tax.”

I wrote this article about the cost of...

How to avoid making a rod for your own back with data

Technical debt is what you accrue when you write bad code or take some expedient shortcut or just...

Stay small or scale? Be clever about your size

In a barney with Amazon about terms, being massive makes for a fairer fight: if retailers are going...

Picking the right software tools for publishing

“What you have to understand about us,” says every publisher ever, “is that we are a little bit different...

Responsibility, Authority, Capability

Publishing is full of tensions. Indies versus conglomerates. Trade versus academic. Start-ups versus...

Six things to do the moment you get back from vacation (disclaimer – you might have to resign)

So I’m just back from a glorious holiday up in Scotland with the boys. We piled onto the Caledonian...

No computer system can fix a broken publisher

With stability taking hold of the hybrid print-digital market after years of rapid ebook growth, many...

You don't need special software to store data properly

The way I drive, sometimes, you wouldn’t think I believe in mechanical sympathy. But I can assure...

Is your strategy setting you up for disappointment?

Skills development, well-thought-through workflows, decent transactional websites, careful integrations...

Discoverability? That's not nearly enough.

Discoverability isn’t nearly enough. Discoverability relies on someone actively trying to discover...

Why ‘easy’ publishing solutions hardly ever are

Almost every week, a new technological innovation comes to market, promising to save publishers money...

Trust the experts or learn the tech? How to make decisions in publishing

Making decisions in an information vacuum is a publishing speciality.

Every time you acquire a book...

Creative industries and the division of labour

How do you arrange people in a modern company?

It’s an endlessly interesting question, and one that...

ISBN is to book as what is to person?

David Aldridge went to the BIC Building a Better Business seminar at the London Book Fair last week...

A non-technical, beginners' guide to ONIX for Books

ONIX is a type of XML (whatever that is)

ONIX is built using something called XML. Let’s not worry...

Why publishers must use direct sales

If you were writing a business plan to set up a new consumer goods business, which of the following...

To go direct, publishers must mean business

The arithmetic of publishing is fairly straightforward: Sell plenty of books at as high a margin as...

Don’t outsource your publishing business away

In the debate over whether to rely on outsourcing or develop skills in-house, I come down firmly on...

Who has the balance of power over data?

Who has access to the data that can best predict how readers will spend their money? Who has data...

Pandemic update

Update, Janury 2021

As England goes into another full lockdown today, with schools closed until mid...

Deanna joins the team!

Some lovely news for us in all of this: we are delighted to announce that Deanna Marbeck joins our...

Brighton Ruby, why's (Poignant) Guide, and justsimply.dev

For a weekend side project for the last few months, I’ve been producing this year’s Brighton Ruby...

Internship report

Ariana writes: “For the last month or so I have had the amazing opportunity to be an intern with Snowbooks...

Nine hard-earned pieces of advice for publishing start-ups

Being an indentured employee is how most people pay the bills. But about 12 years ago I started down...

Grants and sources of funding for software development

Ring the good news bell! We have been awarded a ~£20k Innovation Support for Business government grant...

The clouds have parted... introducing Consonance

After a 10x increase in customers, Bibliocloud has outgrown its start-up roots to become a mature...

The technical story of our rebrand (for non-technical readers)

Everyone in our team is a programmer. But we also cover all the other business functions between us...

No longer an oxymoron – beautiful publishing software

In early 2011, our CEO Emma Barnes sat at the kitchen table and wrote the first lines of Ruby code...

How we unbranded our software company

The Consonance promise is:

to harmonise publishing businesses’ processes, by sharing our expertise...

'Continuing to solve real problems': Futurebook 40, London Book Fair 2018 and the Works page

Just in time for the London Book Fair this week, check out the new works page.

As you probably know...

New website

Never ones to rest on our laurels, here’s our new website. In my previous post (originally for our...

A range of Consonance customisations

“We see how well you service publishers day in and day out.”

–NBN International via Twitter

2018 Customer survey report

This is a long post, so here’s the summary:

* We’re going to work on the things you have told us...

2017 in review

It does give me a more than mild sense of vertigo to think about how much we’ve done. And whilst,...

Sara O'Connor to join the team!

Huge news from us today on day 2 of the London Book Fair 2017. Here’s the full press release! Thanks...

Prizes galore

We were completely delighted this week to be awarded the GBS Services to Independent Publishers award...

Introduction to publishing management software

Introduction to publishing management systems

If you don’t currently have access to a publishing...

What publishers need to know about Ruby on Rails

Since so much of the publishing ecosystem is becoming more and more web-based every day, it helps...

Publishers can learn a few things from programmers

As both a publisher and a programmer, I’m a member of a very select club. I’ve been struck by many...

Learning how to code, the long way around

I’d always meant to learn to code, but there never seemed to be a good time.

I graduated in 1996...

It's us in the industry who need to be able to code

I have a dreadful confession: I still use my fingers to do mental arithmetic. After a couple of decades...

Embrace the code

When I graduated with an archaeology degree in 1996, and got a job as a management trainee for a global...

A taste of code

On Thursday, in conjunction with BookMachine, the Consonance team ran a workshop to teach 30-odd publishers...

Menial publishing jobs are destroying our future

It is easy to look at a creative, or an entrepreneurial person, and assume that they do what they...