Sister product
OnixMaster and the reserve
OnixMaster is DMI's ONIX application for publishers — and it comes with an e-commerce website built in. Digital Media Reserve is the protected fulfilment behind that website. Two products, two brands, one join: your storefront can sell a rights-protected file without anyone writing code.
What OnixMaster does
Book supply chains need high-quality, rich metadata — roughly three hundred pieces of information per title — and incomplete records lose sales. OnixMaster is where publishers create that record and keep it correct.
It is a secure cloud application, available around the clock from any device, multilingual across the Indian languages with Unicode for everything else. Import basic title data from an Excel file, enrich it against the latest ONIX standards, and let the completion cues and internal checks tell you what is still missing. Then push the record to supply-chain partners, or take the feed yourself.
“The all powerful, incredibly easy and supremely capable ONIX application for publishers.”
In OnixMaster
- Rich title data creation
- Intuitive, comprehensive forms, with percentage-completion cues so you can see what the trade still needs from you.
- Quality enforced, not suggested
- Hundreds of internal checks. An ONIX message does not go to the supply chain until the critical data is there.
- Catalogue on the fly
- Advance information sheets and information sheets as PDF, for any title, instantly.
- One screen for the whole list
- Manage the entire catalogue from one place, with colleagues anywhere, on any device.
- Older ONIX brought forward
- Upload metadata in older versions and bring it up to the current ONIX 3.0 standard.
- An integrated e-commerce website
- A web-store generated from the same metadata, with its control panel inside OnixMaster — static pages, promotions, sales reports and customer messages in one place.
The standard underneath
What ONIX for Books actually is
The ONIX for Books Product Information Message is the international standard for representing and communicating book industry product information in electronic form. It is XML-based, it is global rather than tied to one language or market, and it is not a database — it is a way of moving data between databases.
It is maintained by an International Steering Committee that includes its original developers, Book Industry Communication and the Book Industry Study Group, alongside national user groups in sixteen countries. ONIX for Books is the most widely adopted member of a family that also covers serials and publication licences.
Why a publisher cares
- One consistent way to describe a product
- The same record satisfies publishers, retailers and every supply-chain partner in between, instead of a different spreadsheet for each.
- Discoverability is metadata
- A title that is described incompletely is a title a customer does not find. Lost sales usually start here.
- It travels
- A global standard, not limited to one language or one market — which matters the moment you sell outside your own.
- An application, not a spec to implement
- OnixMaster implements the standard so you do not have to. You enter the book; it produces valid ONIX.
Why the trade cares
- Rich product information in a standard form
- Progressively used by wholesalers, distributors, retailers, data aggregators and publishers' affiliates.
- The same core data does several jobs
- Advance information sheets, catalogues, promotional material and publisher websites all come from one record.
- Faster loading, less manual work
- Up-to-date product information moves into customer-facing systems with far lower risk of error.
- Fewer proprietary formats to support
- Which lowers support costs and lets trade associations measure data quality and timeliness at all.
The join
A storefront that can sell a protected file
On its own, the OnixMaster web-store sells books. On its own, the reserve protects and fulfils them but expects a retailer to integrate. Put the two together and the gap closes: the publisher gets direct sales of DRM-protected editions with no developer anywhere in the picture.
What each side brings
- OnixMaster brings the shopfront
- Catalogue pages built from your own metadata, promotions, static pages, customer communications and sales reports.
- The reserve brings the lock
- Encryption, the licence, the download link, re-issue when a customer loses the file, and the fulfilment log.
- You bring the books
- And keep the customer, the branding and the money.
Who this is actually for
- The publisher with no website
- Direct sales is the highest-margin channel and the one most small presses cannot open, because delivering a protected file needs development they do not have.
- The self-publisher
- A storefront and protected downloads without assembling three services and a plugin.
- The press with a website it cannot change
- Run the protected catalogue from the OnixMaster store and link to it, rather than rebuilding what you have.
How a sale runs
From catalogue record to protected download
Create the record
Enter or import the title in OnixMaster and enrich it until the completion cues are satisfied.
Upload the file
The EPUB or PDF/A master goes into the reserve, and the protection level is set for that title.
Publish the page
The OnixMaster web-store builds the product page from the metadata you already entered.
Sell and fulfil
The customer pays on your store; the reserve issues the licence and the encrypted download link.
Two products, honestly
OnixMaster and Digital Media Reserve are separate services from the same company, with their own accounts and their own commercial terms. What we have built between them is the join, not a merger. If you already run OnixMaster, adding the reserve is a conversation rather than a migration — and the reverse is equally true.
Books, but no shop and no developer?
That is the case this pairing was built for. Tell us the size of the list and where you sell today, and we will show you what the combined setup looks like.