Create a new work before you’ve made a decision about whether or not to publish. Enter as much data as possible, to make as sound a publishing decision as possible. Then, if you do decide to go ahead, you won’t have to type in a lot of data – the hard work will already be done.
Have you set up your in-house editions and formats? If you’re just getting started on Consonance, first go to Settings > Configuration ⤴ and configure both your In-house editions and In-house formats. These are for internal reference only and won’t feed out via ONIX. See these instructions for help.
1. Go to the new work page.
Click the Add work button on the works page to go to the New work page.
Why are there so few fields on this page?
The New work page is a quick way to get the bulk of the work and its products set up in one go. Add the detail later.
2. Enter the title
Enter the title including any prefixes such as ‘A’, ‘An’ or ‘The’. It gets automatically split into the Title prefix field and the Title field on the Work > Metadata page.
If one of your products has a different title to the others, edit it later on the Work > Metadata page.
3. Enter basic contract information
Tick the box if the contract is already signed in real life. If you know what sales rights you either have or hope to negotiate, choose them from the dropdown.
4. Enter basic metadata
Consonance stores data that is relevant to all the products of a work at the work level, such as subjects, marketing texts and contributors. It means you don’t have to store the same data for each of the products, which can cause confusion, extra work and inaccuracy.
Later, stop any of the individual products from using that data by unchecking it on the Work > Metadata page.
Fill in metadata field-by-field
Choose Don’t use a work template from the dropdown, and some fields will appear.
The Category field is your in-house classification scheme. Click the label Category next to the field to set up your own categorisation scheme. Categories get used in catalogues, AIs, website feeds and other company information and are a way to tailor the way you describe your products outside of the constraints of industry standards like BIC codes.
There are fields for BIC, BISAC and Thema.
There’s no complete mapping between Thema, BIC and BISAC because the schemes are very different, so choose the subjects you feel most appropriate from both classification schemes. Choose the BIC and BISAC codes which best represent your work – add further ones later to make the work as discoverable as possible.
Use a template
To use a template instead of filling in those fields, choose Use a work template from the dropdown and then choose one from the next dropdown.
If there’s nothing in the template drop down, click the label Template next to the field to go to the Work templates page.
5. Enter the author or editor
Select an existing contact, or Add a new contact. You only add a first name and a last name on this page. If your author or editor has a more complex name, for example Pope John Paul II, edit the record later, on the Work > Metadata page. For the moment, put in the equivalent of John Paul
. Choose the appropriate role. Again, you’ll be able to add many more contributors on the Work > Metadata page later.
6. Choose a schedule template
If you want to set up a schedule, choose one of your schedule templates from the list. Find the newly-created schedule later, on Work > Overview > Workflow.
7. Add text
If you know them at this stage, type in a Proposal, Blurb and Selling points.
Where do Proposal, Blurb and Selling Points feed out to?
Proposal text is in-house only and will not feed out from Consonance. The Blurb is the product’s description and, once it has an ISBN and a publication date, will feed out via ONIX, if you have an ONIX feed. This field also appears on your Advance Information sheets. Selling points appear on your AI and appear in ONIX too. Later on, you add more HTML formatting and other more nuanced marketing texts such as reviews, endorsements, positioning statements and so on, on the Work > Metadata page.
8. Provide product information
Up until now, you have adding work data. Next, add the product data. Scroll to the foot of the page.
Edition
The list of editions is taken from Settings > Configuration > In-house editions ⤴. Tick the box next to the editions that you want to publish for this work.
Format
Choose the correct format from the dropdown. For instance, if you’re on the Hardback product line, you have a drop down to choose from whatever your in-house format descriptions are – something like Demy, B format and Royal, perhaps, but it’s up to you. Set them by clicking on the column heading.
Co-edition?
If you want the product to be recorded in Consonance as someone else’s edition that you are printing, check this box.
ISBN
Unless you are sure that this product is going to be published, or it has already been published and you are back-filling Consonance with its details, choose ‘placeholder’. Allocate a proper ISBN later.
Publication date
Choose from the date picker.
Estimated pages
Enter what you think the page extent will be.
Default price
Add your default price here. Add other currencies and price types later.
9. Click Save
Once you’re happy with the Products section, click the Save button. This creates the work, a blank contract, a schedule (if you wanted one), a new author (unless you selected an existing one) and the products you’ve specified.