Once you’ve written your book, you’ll naturally want to get it into as many hands as possible. There are many ways to do that, however, one of the best ways is by first focusing on your book metadata.
Simply put, your book metadata is any data that describes your publication. It’s all the searchable information, including title, author, genre, book description, ISBN, price, keywords, and more, that readers use to find your book. It’s essential to your book's categorization, discovery, and overall book sales, no matter if a reader is looking in the library, a local bookstore, or online. Dedicating time to getting book metadata correct should be part of any author's overall book marketing and sales strategy, because successful self-publishers know how to incorporate as much quality metadata as possible into their publications.
Book metadata might seem confusing at first, but it's actually not that scary. It has a genuine impact on your book sales, helping readers discover your book and realize they want to read it and is often referred to as your book’s “sales force.” The more exposure your book gets, the better it sells, and quality metadata can be the difference between achieving those sales or missing out on an opportunity to reach a reader.
Following are facts about book metadata to introduce what it is and why it’s so important to your publishing success.
Simply put, metadata is used to describe what a book is about. Descriptive metadata should include elements such as keywords and a book description that will appeal to the intended audience. Writing a compelling book description (which will be discussed in Chapter 4) is the most important aspect of conversion, turning discovery into a sale. Provide keywords (to come in the next chapter) that can be easily incorporated into your book description. Terms like "beach read" or "authoritative biography" will help put your book on the radar of readers who are looking for a certain kind of book with those keywords. Using the right keywords helps customers find your book, while the description drives the conversion.
Including subject codes (which are covered in Chapter 6), whether Thema or BISAC, in book metadata explains what genre the book is. These codes allow retailers, librarians, online stores, search engines and others to know where to shelve a book or how to locate it online. More than one subject code should be assigned to a book in the metadata, ensuring it reaches its intended target audiences.
When assigning your subject codes, think of how a customer browses in a store or library. Usually, he or she will choose based on genre (subject), so be as specific as possible when selecting your subject codes. Customers may not always know what title they’re searching for; they often stumble upon a good read by accident just browsing a general topic they enjoy. Choosing a relevant category for your book is essential to its discovery by the right reader.
A crucial element of your book marketing strategy needs to be making your book easy to discover online. Online consumers unwittingly access book metadata when searching for a book online. There is so much information that can be added to the metadata including title, description, contributors, genre, keywords, related titles and the like. This makes a book easier for potential readers to discover—including those who already know the author's work as well as those who don't.
This is one of the most important aspects of metadata utilization. As noted above, book metadata can include all the answers to questions readers have about a specific book—even if they don't know what book they are looking for or if they even are looking for a book. Inclusion of keywords and all other aspects of your book metadata means that search engines can find it. That's a big part of how specific books get into the hands of specific readers.
Title metadata should include as much relevant information about the author as possible. Whether or not the author has received recognition, awards or specialized education can make a difference for multitudes of readers. Let's face it, there is so much competition when it comes to attracting readership—especially for new authors—that anything that puts the author "above the crowd" in any way can help sell the right books to the right people.
Keep your author name consistent throughout your content to maximize discovery. For example, a simple inconsistency like including a middle initial occasionally but not always may make you, as an author, harder to find.
Information about illustrators, collaborators, and other contributors should be part of your book metadata. Any metadata that includes information about co-authors and other contributors will increase the likelihood that a book will appear in multiple and varied searches.
Creating a master document of your book metadata is a huge time saver when you realize how many places this data is used. The more places metadata surrounding your book appears using the same keywords, descriptions, and general information, the better. Keep a copy of what you’ve used handy and refine it over time. Once you create your master document, use it to disseminate your book information across the web via:
Creating good book metadata takes an initial time investment but once it’s done, you’ll have a great marketing tool that helps you sell books. You can set it and forget it, until it’s time to update. Revisit it every few months, to make sure it remains relevant and reflects any significant opportunities relevant to your book that may pop up in media or culture.
While your content deserves all of your focus and attention while writing, your metadata deserves your focus while preparing your book for publication. A good story is essential, but no one can read what they can’t first find, which is why creating quality book metadata is necessary to support the publication of your masterpiece.
Keep in mind that your prospective reader can search for books in any manner of ways. So now that you have an idea of how metadata helps readers find your book, and that good metadata can make a big difference in how often they do, let’s discuss the most important pieces of your metadata in detail to help you better understand how to optimize each piece individually.
This chapter was compiled from the following posts on the IngramSpark blog:
“The Basics of Book Metadata and Keywords” by Carla King, Founder of Author Friendly
“Book Metadata Tips for Indie Authors” by IngramSpark Staff
“The Value of ISBNs and Book Metadata” by IngramSpark Staff
“The Power of Metadata to Drive Book Discovery and Sales” by IngramSpark Staff
“7 Facts about Book Metadata” by IngramSpark Staff
“8 Components that Influence Book Sales” by IngramSpark Staff
