Thema codes for Dark Emu.
Calling all publishers, editors, sales and marketing professionals - don’t let the mention of metadata or subject classification schemes scare you off from engaging with the importance of Thema in reaching readers.
Thema is the global and multilingual subject classification for books and e-books, which already has wide international support for use in the book trade, whether physical or digital, online or in stores. It is not intended to replace specialist or library schemes, but is instead designed to replace national general purpose book trade schemes over time. Thema provides a structure that has global application and relevance, while meeting local needs.
EDItEUR has prepared a concise 20-minute video as a great starting point for understanding the standard and its applications.
What’s in it for Australian publishers?
The quick answer? Increased discoverability and sales.
Thema will ground your book in a whole new layer of discoverability that works for retailers and consumers alike. The wants of readers are constantly changing, and if you’re providing what the Australian reader wants but they cannot find it, you’re missing out on sales.
You can communicate things like:
- if a book is about certain groups or communities;
- if the story takes place in a specific state, region or country;
- information about the books' contributors: their country of origin/languages spoken/race/sexual identity (although we touched on challenges around this here);
- the audience for which the book is intended;
Thema is constantly updated through an international network of working groups that respond to the demands of the local book market. If you want to explore describing your books better, Thema will support this. The APA coordinates the Australian working group, and if the concepts and categories within your Publishing list aren’t yet described within Thema, we can coordinate submissions to the international standard.
We know that Australian readers want a wide and diverse offering of Australian stories. Increasing the representation of marginalized communities in books needs to be supported by ensuring they are easily discoverable by the readers and booksellers who are demonstrating appetite for these works. Incorrect or insufficient metadata is a massive barrier for these books ending up in the hands of readers. The most accessible content is inaccessible if it cannot be discovered by the reader who needs it.
It's not a matter of your publishing house using Thema over BIC or keywords. Thema, in combination with ONIX, can be a powerful complement to your existing subject categorisation for communicating the most important information about your books. In an increasingly digital world, answering in your metadata the questions booksellers and book buyers might ask themselves plays a critical role in whether or not the right books get to the hands of the readers, or if they instead stay in warehouses.
The APA regularly hears that metadata tends to just be the concern of the IT department. Hopefully it is clear in the two Thema examples below that these descriptions are best identified by those in the creation process who know both the book and its readers best. More examples can be found here.
Thema codes for Welcome to Country.
Thema codes for Young Dark Emu.
Calling all publishers, editors, sales and marketing professionals - don’t let the mention of metadata or subject classification schemes scare you off from engaging with the importance of Thema in reaching readers.
Learn more about Thema
EDItEUR has prepared a concise 20-minute video as a great starting point for understanding Thema
.
If we’ve convinced you that this is a discussion you’d like to be a part of, we’d encourage you to get involved with the Australian Thema Group, which you can do here.
Further resources to increase your Thema knowledge are available below:
Explore EDItEUR's Thema resources, including:
You can also watch the video below to learn more about ONIX, Thema and Discoverability.
For more video content, the BIC Brunch Thema series, covers a range of topics including:
If you have questions about Thema, or adding Thema to your TitlePage metadata, you can email the APA’s in house metadata geek.