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This documentation will cover the most common case of distribution change as a detailed workflow, but please read the common problem section below as there are some practices in North America that work against this simple and clear method.
Change of distribution
There are so many options possible when a publisher sells a product line to another publisher (starting with whether the ISBN is being maintained or not) that a workflow chart would get unnecessarily complex. Suffice it to say here, changing ISBNs is simple and maintaining the previous publisher’s ISBNs requires trading partners who understand what the expected outcome should be.
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Description: Notice of acquisition
Notes: Notice of acquisition of a product, by one publisher from another: sent by the acquiring publisher
A typical workflow for the common use case of a change in distribution
Notices
As covered in the previous post, the publisher works with the incoming and outgoing distributors in advance to set various dates to be publicized, the most important of which are:
the date when the distribution changes; and
dates for when and how returns will be accepted by both parties.
The terms for the new distributor agreement should be clear, particularly if there are any changes.
Highlight any special considerations, especially concerning the handling of forthcoming titles that will appear after the date of the change.
Ideally this information is distributed to trading partners well in advance but it should at least be as soon as possible.
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The outgoing distributor continues to show the books with appropriate availability up to the date of the distribution change.
This is a good time for the publisher to clean their lists and declare books out-of-print if they do not plan to move them to the new distributor.
On or just before the date of distribution change
The outgoing distributor lists ALL of the product line showing all active, forthcoming, or out-of-stock books whose data they had been distributing with a Product Availability code of “43” to show the books are “Not Our Product” (NOP). There should be no need to update out-of-print codes but all codes should be associated with a not-accepting-order status (read the code list “Notes” if you’re unsure).
On or just after the date of distribution change
The incoming distributor lists ALL of the product line they are selling with an appropriate List 65 code showing the books as available for order.
After the date of distribution change
Ideally the outgoing distributor should no longer reference these books in their delta feeds, but trading partners loading data should be aware that full data distribution can take time.
Companies loading full or complete files issued by the outgoing distributor should expect to find the NOP references in the data and should ensure that they do not overwrite active data from the new distributor.
The outgoing distributor should drop the records from their active feeds (including complete files) once the return period is past and they no longer have a business relationship with the client.
The outgoing distributor should maintain the records in case of a request from a trading partner.
The incoming distributor should continue to support their data normally after the initial file, but it’s strongly recommended that they continue to issue a full set of records for their new client in several delta files over the next month or two. This will ensure that retailer processing logic will have several opportunities to catch up to the new client’s data as well as correcting the data left or created by activity in the outgoing distributor’s feed.
In the case of very large clients, the incoming distributor should work with their trading partners to solve issues as repetition of all available data in delta files might not be practical.
Common problems
Forthcoming books
In a well-planned change of distribution (or a change of ownership), there will be forthcoming books that will never be handled by the outgoing distributor (or publisher) and they represent a potential for extra costs. A common solution is for the incoming distributor to list these forthcoming books and accept orders in advance of the distribution change. This is an excellent solution if this information is announced in advance of any records appearing for these products. Your trading partners often have associations linking publishers and distributors and, if they aren't prepared, these forthcoming records can cause problems. It’s probably best if the outgoing distributor never carried the records. If the publication dates are months in the future, the outgoing distributor might work with their trading partners on accepting an early transfer to the new distributor.
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When questioned about these practices, if any reply is made, we’re normally told retailers understand what they mean and that this is the expected practice.
Food for thought
BookNet receives questions from Canadian publishers who are being questioned about these sorts of practices by US distributors. The US distributors need accurate statement to define markets. The above practices do not actually define Canada as a market consistently and certainly not well. Ill-defined Canadian data being compared to a US distributor claiming non-exclusive supplier rights to our market cannot be disputed (at least by the metadata or a set of business rules using it). Fully one-third of the Supply Details that carry a Supplier Role Code in BiblioShare’s ONIX 2.1 data (that’s “only” just over 100,000 in total because Supplier Role remains poorly supported) claim “Non-exclusive supplier rights.” Most are US distributors supplying metadata to Canada.
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This originally appeared on the BNC Blog at https://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog/2020/1/27/communicating-divestment-in-onix-how-to-do-it-and-common-problems. Subscribe the the blog RSS at https://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog?format=rss.