This post is part of the Publishing Resources Guide. Read more about Pre-Publication.
Metadata is simply information about your book that the retailers use to sort, categorize, and display your book. It includes title, subtitle, author name, publication date, page count, categories and keywords. Most indie publishers are referring to categories and keywords when they talk about metadata, but it’s all part of the definition.
Basics
Metadata is important because it influences what books appear when a reader searches the website for a book. You see, the retail sites are basically one large search engine (just like Google) just waiting to serve up books to a browser. If you don’t label your book correctly it won’t come up in the searches, and it therefore has less chance to be seen. Amazon has the strongest search function, but they all have a search function that will bring up search terms. You’ll need to get all this sorted out before uploading your book to the retailer.
The Your First 10,000 Readers course has a whole section of excellent videos on all of this.
Title and Subtitle
These are more important than you might think. They are an immediate clue to your reader about what kind of book this is, and when done right they also provide metadata for searches. This is obvious for non-fiction. If you’re writing a book about writing then you include the word writing somewhere in your title or subtitle. But it’s important for fiction, too. Consider these titles:
The Rake: A Dark Royal Romance by L.J. Shen
Edge of Madness: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller by Kayla Stone
That second one may be a little heavy on the keywords, but do you automatically know what kind of book these are? You do, and so does the search engine (aka retail store) they’re being sold on.
Categories
Categories are the book’s genre, and they dictate which shelf your book will be shelved on. The cool thing about online retail is that a book can be ‘shelved’ in many different places at once. Amazon gives you up to 10 categories per book, and the others give you at least two.
Keywords
Keywords are search terms that you can assign the book. They are anything a reader might search for to find the kind of book they want. When a reader goes onto their online bookstore and types in Mystery Novel that’s a keyword. These are important because you can put in numerous different keywords that cover the breadth of your book’s topic. Don’t duplicate keywords and categories – pick as many different ones as you can to broaden your umbrella as far as possible.
Since you’ll almost certainly be selling your book on Amazon you should start reading there to get the basic principles. The basics then apply to the other sites, too, though you’ll have fewer options to choose from.
Amazon
Categories
- The SECRET Method to Choosing the Best Amazon Categories
- Book Category Tool by Nerdy Book Girl – This will let you see the hidden categories for any book on Amazon, including your own.
Keywords
- How to Choose the Right Kindle Keywords
- 7 Kindle Keywords: Use All 50 Characters Or Not?
- Kindle Keyword Strategy for Fiction Authors
- Keywords in Your Book Description: Do They Help?
- How to Change Your Keywords and Why You Should
The best tool for finding Amazon Keywords and Categories is by far Publisher Rocket, which lets you see both immediately with just a few keystrokes. It can also help you analyze other books in your genre, and find keywords for amazon ads.
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