An Author's Guide to Metadata

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For anyone without experience in marketing, phrases like metadata and keywords can seem daunting. But in this post I'll break down the concepts and what you need to know in order to more effectively market your book.

Metadata is essentially data that describes other data. In books, metadata is used to describe the book. Metadata includes info about your book's title, price, ISBN, genre, etc. When readers are looking for a book they use keywords—the words and phrases you put into a search engine. Then the search engine will pull results based on the keywords and the metadata. There are other factors that affect what order the results show up in, but metadata is an important factor.

You'll end up putting the metadata in a lot of different places, so it can be helpful to keep all of it together in one file. In that file you'll want to include this info:

• Title

• Author

• Author bio

• Book description

• Genre (BISAC codes are helpful here)

• Keywords

• Formats (ebook, paperback, etc.)

• If you plan to include reviews/quotes add them here

• Audience (YA, adult, etc., just make sure to pick one that matches your genre)

• Any awards

• If it's part of a series

• subgenres

• Themes

• For nonfiction, the subject/topic

Having everything in one place will make it easier when you start listing your book online. Just don't forget that if you update the metadata in one place it needs to be updated everywhere. 

Metadata is the best way to reach the right readers, so make sure you carefully consider what you include. Metadata determines where your book is put—on physical and virtual bookshelves. It can be tempting to aim wide, but you need to reach the reader who is looking for books like yours. Otherwise, if a reader is expecting one book and gets another they won't be happy—and may even review your book based on what they were expecting. Reviews are important when most shopping is done online, and reaching the right reader is going to be the key to good reviews. When you are putting together your metadata just remember that you want to describe what your book is and who it would appeal to.