diff --git a/book/src/SUMMARY.md b/book/src/SUMMARY.md
index 1a632f927..d0fb8d27a 100644
--- a/book/src/SUMMARY.md
+++ b/book/src/SUMMARY.md
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
 * [Metadata](./metadata.md)
   - [Defining metadata types in rust](./metadata_derive.md)
   - [Metadata and tables](./metadata_tables.md)
-  - [Metadata schema](./metadata_schema.md)
+  - [Metadata processing with Python](./metadata_python.md)
   - [Advanced topics](./metadata_advanced.md)
 
 * [Error handling](./error_handling.md)
diff --git a/book/src/metadata_python.md b/book/src/metadata_python.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..4cf1ed110
--- /dev/null
+++ b/book/src/metadata_python.md
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+# Metadata processing with Python
+
+## `JSON` metadata
+
+If your metadata are generated in `JSON` format via `serde` (see [here](metadata_derive.md)), then the metadata are simple to access from Python.
+The code repository for `tskit-rust` contains examples in the `python/` subdirectory.
+
+You may work with `JSON` metadata with or without a metadata schema (see [here](https://tskit.dev/tskit/docs/stable/metadata.html)).
+A schema is useful for data validation but there is an unfortunate inefficiency if your input to Python is a tree sequence rather than a table collection.
+You will have to copy the tables, add the metadata schema, and regenerate a tree sequence.
+See the examples mentioned above.
+
+## Other formats
+
+The `tskit-python` API only supports `JSON` and Python's `struct` data formats.
+It is useful to use a format other than `JSON` in order to minimize storage requirements.
+However, doing so will require that you provide a method to covert the data into a valid Python object.
+
+An easy way to provide conversion methods is to use [pyo3](https://pyo3.rs) to create a small Python module to deserialize your metadata into Python objects.
+The `tskit-rust` code repository contains an example of this in the `python/` subdirectory.
+The module is shown in its entirety below:
+
+```rust, noplaygound, ignore
+{{#include ../../python/tskit_glue/src/lib.rs}}
+```
+
+Using it in Python is just a matter of importing the module:
+
+```python
+{{#include ../../python/test_bincode_metadata.py}}
+```
diff --git a/book/src/metadata_schema.md b/book/src/metadata_schema.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 036c0323f..000000000
--- a/book/src/metadata_schema.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,17 +0,0 @@
-# Metadata schema
-
-For useful data interchange with `tskit-python`, we need to define [metadata schema](https://tskit.dev/tskit/docs/stable/metadata.html).
-
-There are currently several points slowing down a rust API for schema:
-
-* It is not clear which `serde` formats are compatible with metadata on the Python side.
-* Experiments have shown that `serde_json` works with `tskit-python`.
-  * Ideally, we would also like a binary format compatible with the Python `struct`
-    module.
-* However, we have not found a solution eliminating the need to manually write the
-  schema as a string and add it to the tables.
-  Various crates to generate JSON schema from rust structs return schema that are over-specified
-  and fail to validate in `tskit-python`.
-* We also have the problem that we will need to add some Python to our CI to prove to ourselves
-  that some reasonable tests can pass.
-