A need for accuracy
Publishing professionals, particularly librarians and companies working with them, are the most likely users of Audience, Audience Ranges and Subject information and these values should work together to provide them a clear picture of the book. Unfortunately the data supplied by publishers for these values is notorious for being contradicting or unsuitable for use by professionals and it follows that these values are the most likely to be modified by retailers and data aggregators.
Many publishers do a great job here and are highly professional about their assessments. Some may not be great at metadata and may inadvertently add errors and contradictions to their data. Still others may try to be all inclusive in a mistaken belief that saying "0 to 99" or portraying their audience as limitless will include them in more selects by professionals. It will not. Here's some points to keep in mind:
Professional users expect to be able to create book lists or "select" from databases based on the primary Audience code values:
- General/trade (intended for a non-specialist adult audience)
- Children/juvenile (intended for a juvenile audience, not specifically for any educational purpose.)
- Young adult (intended for a teenage audience, not specifically for any educational purpose.)
- Primary and secondary/elementary and high school (intended for kindergarten, pre-school, primary/elementary or secondary/high school education.)
- College/higher education (intended for universities and colleges of further and higher education.)
- Professional and scholarly (intended for an expert adult audience, including academic research.)
- ELT/ESL (intended for use in teaching English as a second language.)
- Adult education (intended for centres providing academic, vocational or recreational courses for adults.)
and obtain an accurate subdivision of a database or a publisher's list. The primary Audience Identifiers for "Trade" books are the first three and the balance are normally used by publishers creating products specifically for the group identified. When in doubt use "Trade" identifiers as they are the most common and generic.
Professionals, using a BISAC Subject Code, would then expect that all "Main Subjects" and "Additional Subjects" to correspond to this primary audience identifier:
- Books identified for Children/juvenile or Young adult MUST be supported by appropriate Subjects lists for Juveniles
- Books intended for Adults MUST be supported by appropriate subjects from the non-Juvenile subject lists.
No one says this is a perfect way to do things, but professionals actually know what they are doing and allowances are made -- particularly for YA novels as cross-over to adult products. Please note that Thema Subject Codes are not used in quite the same way but this would remain true at the Main Subject level. (In Thema secondary codes are handled more loosely, so a Fiction book where, say, Slavery forms a major part of the plot might well apply the non-fiction Subject Code for Slavery.)
Note that the ONIX standard allows Audience Codes to repeat, but that's not wanted using the first 3 identifiers for Trade audience. Repetition allows for the exceptional case when a book might be suitable for both Trade and Education and the reason repetition may make sense is that different professionals would be making the select. Think of it this way: A buyer or other book professional is trying to get a list of books to vet so they start subdividing entries based on Audience. The might "select" all books matching value(s) – OR – they might discard all books matching value(s). In either case they aren't expecting repetition of "trade" audience values and for the latter case the repetition might eliminate the book from any select, while in the former case finding records with dual trade codes would just be confusing. Accuracy is important because a list of Education books that was chocked with titles with tenuous educational merit simply is discarded and the selection process tries to workaround poor data. Selection starts with lists, the list starts at audience and Audience Codes need to be used in away that supports selection.
When supporting trade books a publisher must choose only ONE from 01 to 03 Audience codes and the BISAC Subject coding must be appropriate for that audience. (Thema is the same for Main Subject but there are slightly different rules around the balance of the subject code that <might> come into play. See our pages on Thema for more.)
Audience Ranges
Juvenile books (both Children's and Young Adult titles) must be supported by Audience Range information. If there are any points to be emphasized here it is that:
- Useful range information is specific: Any range wider then three or at most four years is considered by professionals to be unusable for most purposes.
- YA books might be identified using an open ended statement but specific ranges are still more useful.
Publishers of Juvenile books spend a lot of time and energy developing expertise in their products and one of the ways they demonstrate it is accuracy in Audience Range information. They mean what they say and are genuinely upset when their data is modified by other industry players. If you're new to publishing talk to children librarians about this and try to develop a basis for producing accurate information. Considering getting help in making assessments from an experienced freelancer. The time spent developing an understanding of professional need will be repaid.
There are three Audience Ranges typically provided for slightly different purposes:
Interest Age information is the least specific and is supplied as a general guideline to support trade sales. What age does the editor and author say the book is for? They should know. This information is recommended to be included on all Juvenile books even if another range type is supplied.
Grade Ranges (US or Canada are considered equivalent) are supplied by many publishers. They are slightly more specific than Interest Age but because the grade ranges don't correspond to any curriculum are they are still generic. It should be supplied when the book is can be considered a useful adjunct for teaching to that grade.
Reading Age is a much more technical assessment of a book's content. For instance a book may have a high Interest Age and a low Reading Age if the book is combining a 10 year old's interests with simplified language. Doing this right requires real knowledge and should only be supplied if the publisher has developed the skills or had professional assistance in providing it. If a librarian or book buyer assesses your range information as wildly inaccurate it will taint the rest of your good work. If in doubt, don't supply it.
Want to know more? A BISG whitepaper Best Practices for Keywords in Metadata shows how all the parts of Subject and Audience work together.