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ONIX feeds

Standards-compliant ONIX 3 feeds, per channel.

Most authors will never see an ONIX feed. But if you're a small press, an imprint, or a publisher with established workflows, the quality of your ONIX is the quality of your distribution. Chiify generates per-channel ONIX 3.0 feeds and can ingest yours directly.

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ONIX is the standard XML format the book industry uses to exchange product metadata between publishers, distributors, and retailers. EDItEUR publishes the spec; the current version is 3.0 (3.1 is in draft).

For individual authors, ONIX is invisible: you fill in your title, description, and BISAC categories in our UI, and we serialize that into the right XML format per channel. For publishers running their own catalog systems, ONIX is the interchange format — and the quality of your ONIX directly controls how well your books show up in retailers’ search and recommendation engines.

What our ONIX feeds include

  • Product identifiers — ISBN-13, GTIN-13, internal SKUs, optionally DOI
  • Title elements — full title, subtitle, original-language title, alternative title sequence
  • Contributors — authors, co-authors, narrators, translators, illustrators, editors — with proper ONIX role codes (A01, A02, B01, B06, A12, etc.)
  • Subject classification — BISAC subject codes (3), Thema codes (for European/UK retailers), audience codes, age range
  • Publishing details — publisher, imprint, publication date, edition number
  • Product form — EPUB / EPUB-fixed-layout / audiobook / paperback / hardcover with proper format codes
  • Accessibility metadata — codes 94, 95, 96, 97 for compliance and conformance level (EAA 2025 ready)
  • Descriptions — short description (200 char), long description (4,000 char), table of contents (where applicable), review quotes
  • Pricing — list price per market, suggested retail price, currency, tax info, included-or-excluded VAT
  • Sales rights — territory-by-territory rights, sales restrictions, library lending rights

Per-channel customization

Different channels parse different subsets of ONIX. Cantook’s Cantook Hub uses one profile (lots of accessibility fields, library-lending terms, multi-language support). IngramSpark uses another (heavy on print specifications, binding details, BISAC mandatory). Apple uses its own variant. We serialize correctly for each, rather than a one-size-fits-all feed that some channels misinterpret.

You can see exactly which channels we’re generating ONIX for, and what each feed looks like, in your dashboard.

Bring your own ONIX (Enterprise)

If you already produce ONIX 3 feeds — typical for established small presses, scholarly publishers, or imprints with 50+ titles — Enterprise accounts can ingest your feed directly. We validate against the EDItEUR spec, route per-title to the channels you specify, and deliver. You retain control of your metadata workflow, we handle the distribution plumbing.

Enterprise also supports incremental feed updates (correction, price change, takedown) without re-shipping the whole catalog every time.

Frequently asked

Do I need ONIX as an individual author?
Probably not. ONIX is a metadata standard used by publishers and retailers to exchange book information. As an individual author publishing through Chiify, we generate the ONIX feed for you automatically when we ship your book — you don't have to think about it. The reason this page exists is for small presses, imprints, and high-volume publishers who want to understand what's happening under the hood, or who want to plug their own existing ONIX feed into our distribution pipeline.
Which ONIX version do you generate?
ONIX 3.0, the current standard. We support both the Cantook reference profile (for delivery to De Marque's hub) and the IngramSpark profile (for delivery to Ingram). Each retailer's parser handles a slightly different subset of ONIX fields; we serialize correctly for each one rather than producing a single generic feed that some retailers misinterpret.
Can I upload an existing ONIX feed instead of using your metadata UI?
Yes, for Enterprise accounts. If you maintain your own catalog system and produce ONIX 3 feeds, we can ingest your feed directly, validate it, and route to channels — bypassing our UI entirely. This is the cleanest path for publishers with 100+ titles or with established workflows.
What ONIX fields do you populate?
The complete required set plus the recommended optional fields most retailers actually use: ProductIdentifier (ISBN-13), Title, Subtitle, Contributor (with role codes), Subject (BISAC and Thema codes), Publisher, ImprintName, PublishingDate, Description (long and short), Audience, AudienceRange (for kids' and YA books), AccessibilityFeature/Hazard/Mode (for EAA compliance), Language, NumberOfPages or Duration (for audio), PriceAmount per Territory, and the full SupplyDetail / SalesRights structure that lets retailers know where they can and can't sell the book.
Can you exclude certain territories or retailers per title?
Yes. Per-title territory exclusions (e.g. "don't distribute in the EU because we have a separate deal there") and per-channel routing rules (e.g. "send to Cantook but not to IngramSpark") are managed in your dashboard per book.

More on Chiify

Ebook distribution →

ONIX is the plumbing under our retailer integrations. See the end-author view.

WCAG 2.2 accessibility →

ONIX accessibility codes 94, 95, 97 are set automatically — EAA 2025 ready.

Enterprise inquiry →

Bring your own ONIX feed and our distribution pipeline handles the rest.

ONIX, done right.

Per-channel feeds, full standards compliance, BYOI feed ingestion for Enterprise. Talk to our team.

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