At BIC, we pride ourselves on working collaboratively with key stakeholders in the UK book industry to produce quality training courses that are created and delivered by expert, highly-respected trainers on a wide range of supply chain topics. Being a not-for-profit organisation, BIC is able to offer all of its training at highly competitive rates. 

BIC’s Extensive Training Programme

BIC has an extensive training programme, consisting of three course types:

  • Metadata & Technical 
  • Production
  • Library

All of BIC’s Production courses are designed in conjunction with a panel of Production Directors from leading publishing houses to ensure that they focus on what you need to know. Each course contains a formal assessment recognised by many of the UK’s publishing houses. 

Our Metadata & Technical courses include:

For further information about each of our courses, including Course Outline PDFs and all available course dates, click on the course names listed below.

ONIX: Essentials Plus (online course)
ONIX: Advanced Topics (online course)
Thema: Essentials (online course)

Other BIC Metadata & Technical training courses – Register of Interest only:

In addition to the courses listed above, BIC has an array of courses which are currently taking registers of interest only.

Please note that BIC will only schedule a date for the following courses when a full list of delegates has been identified; BIC will endeavour to run each course within 6-8 weeks of the list being identified.

By clicking on the Register Your Interest links, below, you will be directed to the BIC Register of Interest sign-up form for your chosen course.

To find out further information about each course, please contact BIC directly: info@bic.org.uk

A Technical Introduction to ONIX & XML (online course)email: info@bic.org.uk
Introduction to BIC EDI Message Formats & Code ListsRegister Your Interest
A Technical Introduction to XML for Transactions & 
BIC Realtime (APIs / Web Services)
Register Your Interest

Our Production courses include:

For further information about each of our courses, including Course Outline PDFs and all available course dates, click on the course names listed below. The ‘Registration’ links will take you to the event / registration webpage for the next available course date, although subsequent dates may be available.  

Colour Book Production ExplainedRegistration here
An Introduction to Production (online course)Registration here
Making and Managing Monochrome Registration here
eBook Creation: Investigated & Explained (online course)Registration here
eBook Creation: Advanced and Practical  (in person course)Registration here

Other BIC Production training courses – Register of Interest only:

In addition to the courses listed above, BIC has an array of production courses which are currently taking registers of interest only. Please note that BIC will only schedule a date for the following courses when a full list of delegates has been identified; BIC will endeavour to run each course within 6-8 weeks of the list being identified. By clicking on the Register Your Interest links, below, you will be directed to the BIC Register of Interest sign-up form for your chosen course. To find out further information about each course, please click on the Course Outline links or contact BIC directly: info@bic.org.uk

Digital Printing for BooksRegister Your Interest
Production for Non-Production People (online course)Register Your Interest
Pre-Press for PublishingRegister Your Interest
Shipping ExplainedRegister Your Interest
Understanding PaperRegister Your Interest

Our Library training courses include:

For further information about each of our courses, including all available course dates, click on the course names listed below. The ‘Course Outline’ links will take you directly to the relevant PDF for each course. The ‘Registration’ links will take you to the event / registration webpage for the next available course date, although subsequent dates may be available. 

EDI for Libraries  Registration coming soon

Three Tiers of Pricing

BIC has three tiers of pricing for each of its courses, as follows:

  • BIC Members
  • Friends of BIC
  • Non-Members

Travel and accommodation costs are not included in the ticket price. 

If you are unsure whether your organisation is a BIC Member, please visit the members page on our website, to check.

If your organisation is not in BIC membership but is instead a member of any of the following organisations, you will be eligible to book discounted ‘Friends of BIC‘ tickets for our courses:

  • ALPSP
  • The Booksellers Association
  • BookMachine
  • CILIP
  • NAG
  • The Publishers Association 
  • Publishing Scotland
  • PLS 

IPG members are also eligible to receive a discount on the BIC Non-Member ticket price – contact us for further information. 

The training rates / prices for each of our courses vary. To find out the cost for any BIC course that you’re interested in attending (for all 3 ticket types), please click on the course’s dedicated webpage using the links provided above. 

If you’d like to speak with a BIC representative about your organisation becoming a BIC Member and the benefits involved, please contact us.


Bespoke and In-House Training

BIC is committed to providing accessible training for the book industry. We are able to provide both bespoke courses and in-house training to suit your requirements. If there is a topic that you would like us to provide training on, that we do not provide at present, get in touch. All the training courses featured on this webpage are suitable for in-house training so please do contact us to request further information.


BIC Training Course Mailing List

In line with the BIC Privacy Policy, whether you work for a BIC Member or non-member organisation, you can join the BIC Training Course mailing list to receive BIC’s email campaigns concerning all BIC training courses only. To keep up to date with all of our training courses please sign up to our mailing list.