IPA gives support to Thema

The International Publishers Association (IPA) is giving its official backing to Thema, the new subject classification for the book trade.

Thema aims to be globally applicable and reduce cross-border confusion about subject codes, and is tailored for commercial use within the trade.

It was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2012.

Jens Bammel, IPA’s secretary general, said: "With publishers everywhere keen to boost the 'discoverability' of their works, there is a growing realisation of the power of metadata to improve merchandising, sales and market intelligence.

“Subject classification of books and e-books is critical and given the increasingly international nature of the book trade, the need for a global scheme is clear: for too long, national divisions have been accepted as inevitable.”

He continued: “Thema aims to be global in scope, multi-cultural and multi-lingual, applicable to all parts of the book supply chain, and flexible enough to allow each market to retain its unique cultural voice, while remaining a unified and simple-to-adopt standard.

“I'm delighted that a number of IPA members are actively collaborating on Thema, which promises to solve problems for publishers. I fully endorse this initiative."

Thema is managed by EDItEUR, the trade standards body for the global book trade, which also manages ONIX for Books, EDItX and other metadata, identifier and e-commerce standards.