What makes Consonance the new standard in publishing management?

Details matter

A myriad of innovative, intelligent automations, born out of a deep understanding of the challenges of the industry, add up to a service that sets a new standard out of the reach of other title management systems.

Here’s one thoughtful little innovation: a single click that extracts the table of contents from the ebook itself, and sets it as the ONIX table of contents, saving time and promoting accuracy. Here’s a playlist of many more innovations, from currency price comparisons and audiobooks as first-class citizens, to derived works and keyboard-accessible drag and drop.

Everything everywhere all at once

Other systems have modules: ‘title management’ here, ‘royalties and rights’ there. But Consonance is a single “magnificent monolith” app. All your related data is a click – not a new sign-in – away. And because its design adheres to the normal conventions of the modern internet, with accessibility in mind, finding and editing data is already baked into your users’ muscle memory.

One way to manage custom user abilities in Consonance.

Everything available – but on your terms

  • No “title” limit
  • No ONIX feed limit
  • No additional cost for additional modules (the promise of “one version of the truth” becomes less compelling if you have to pay extra to achieve it)
  • Choose from public or private cloud
  • No additional cost for asset storage e.g. multi-terabyte audio files
  • No feature restrictions by default. Refinable with bespoke user ability management.

Consonance improves your metadata, then sends it widely and completely

Screenshot of Consonance showing data check results in colour.

Get your ONIX metadata complete – quickly and efficiently

Consonance has many ways to make ONIX metadata maintenance better, such as data checks, plentiful links to let you jump straight to the right part of the system, bulk edit pages, and simple yet powerful features such as a dropdown list of the ISBN list you bought from Nielsen or Bowker, and automatic barcode generation.

Screenshot of Thema subject classification codes in Consonance.

Industry-leading guidance

We provide a personal service: through the Consonance app, and also through direct advice and configuration. Expert, dedicated support, including tailored development, is always a click away for every person on your team. For example, Consonance presents industry advice on Thema, BIC and BISAC codes at the right time, in the right place, so you get the sales benefit of well-classified books.

Shows discussions in Consonance.

Keep the whole team informed about metadata updates and changes

Consonance is a comprehensive publishing management system, with workflow tools closely integrated with metadata, rights, royalties and production capabilities. We appreciate that Consonance is one player in your overall systems landscape, so, for example, discussions integrate with email and to-dos integrate with your calendaring system. One version of the truth, everywhere.

Screenshot of two briefing notes.

Your data in one place, up-to-date and accessible, wherever you are

Consonance’s usability means any authorised member of your team can update data as soon as it changes. And by empowering the publishing team to enter and export data to ever increasing standards of timeliness, completion, effectiveness and accuracy, your books are more discoverable and appealing, and sell more at higher prices.

ONIX set up on Consonance, with a fragment of ONIX showing.

Complex ONIX data, without the complexity

We send over seventy flavours of ONIX file to book trade recipients who have all interpreted the standard slightly differently. It’s our problem, not yours: we liase all the time with recipients to accommodate their requirements, such as Ingram CoreSource, Findaway, Longleaf, EBSCO, Faber, JSTOR, Nielsen, and Amazon. We calculate and add agency pricing on the fly, send images and content files to different directories, limit feeds by imprint, series, and ad-hoc requirements, and send incremental or full 2.1 or 3 feeds on whatever schedule you need. Because our code is modern and malleable, and our approach is pragmatic and can-do, we bend and flex where others snap. Read more about variations in ONIX.

Data in and out: a good citizen of your overall systems landscape

From publishing schedules and advance information sheets to distributor spreadsheets, ONIX 2.1 and 3.0 feeds, JSON feeds, JATS journals data, and flexible two-way GraphQL endpoints, Consonance saves you time and ensures data accuracy across the supply chain by exchanging data with other systems and people, in a range of formats

Screenshot of a Google calendar, showing data fed from Consonance.

Consonance makes your data work harder, by repurposing it in a multitude of formats

  • Download instant bulk exports of all your products, prices, stock history and more.
  • Build your own custom spreadsheets using Consonance’s flexible custom report templates.
  • Consonance turns data into action through issue tracking, briefing notes, and key date management.
  • Visualise data in the right place – such as dates in your usual calendar app.
  • Feed your website from Consonance. Leuven University Press is a good example of a website that takes a nightly feed from Consonance.
  • ONIX, in every flavour imaginable. Open Access unpriced items? Omit certain series? Zip the files in a specific format? Order BISACs? We adapt and deliver whatever the next bespoke thing is that the trade needs.

“Hugely impressed with the interface and user design elements of Consonance, and the modern approach to system architecture which we feel is well placed to grow with us as our programme grows.”
Institute of Physics Publishing
Advance information sheets output from Consonance.

When presentation matters, Consonance makes data beautiful.

  • No more copying-and-pasting into InDesign. With Consonance, automatically generate beautiful information sheets for all your products, and then download them in bulk whenever you need. Your AIs are accurate, up-to-date, and compelling to retailers.
  • Reuse your metadata on automatically generated, elegant internal and third-party briefing documents, so you never have to copy and paste ISBNs and blurbs in emails to designers, again.

Run an efficient and timely publishing programme

There are many project management tools available – but only Consonance integrates your to-dos with your publishing-specific data

Making to dos, relative to other publication and contract dates, in Consonance.
  • Set to-do deadlines relative to pub dates and contract data.
  • Define your own workflow, in your own words, to whatever level of detail fits your business, through a clean and modern interface.
  • Let your workflow evolve by incorporating lessons learned into future plans.
  • Keep track of key dates and deadlines across multiple schedules and a growing list.
  • Estimate and measure your schedules, so you address bottlenecks, eliminate waste and publish faster and more accurately, over time.

“Consonance is instrumental in keeping our data organised and getting it out to our trading partners. They have (time and again) been able to facilitate our changing needs and work with us to bring the highest quality data to our website and beyond. With regular updates on new and improved features, and a highly responsive team, Consonance is always a pleasure to work with and we highly recommend them to anyone wishing to streamline workloads and improve their business.” – Heather Gallagher, Liverpool University Press

Contracts, rights, permissions and royalties

A key part of the smooth running of any publisher, Consonance provides full-fledged publishing royalties management, so you can honour promises made to authors without drowning in admin

A contract produced from Consonance.
  • Store your contract data in Consonance, so that advances, manuscript delivery dates, rights information and gratis copy obligations are at your team’s fingertips, forever – not buried in scanned PDFs or a filing cabinet.
  • Generate beautiful, automated contracts for every work – and equip yourselves to automate your royalties, down the line.
  • Powerful royalty management features – combined with the most usable interface on the market. Read the detailed docs

Publishers around the world run their business on Consonance

University presses, scholarly institutions, academic publishers, trade publishers, multi-nationals, digital, and audio-only publishers rely on Consonance

“…By streamlining and automating processes it has freed up many publishers to focus on their publishing. One said: “Consonance is a game-changer for us…it’s transformed how we manage our titles and our metadata. It’s so easy to use and does whatever we want it to do.” – The IPG, on our IPA Services to Publishers award
Confidentiality requires us not to disclose some of our other multi-national clients’ identities, but they are happy to provide private references on request.