Book metadata is important to your book's categorization, discovery, and overall book sales. Metadata and keywords are what make your book appear when a reader goes looking for a specific thing, whether that thing is a book or not. It should be part of any book marketing strategy, and successful publishers know how to incorporate as much quality metadata as possible into their sales plans. If good metadata isn't in place, finding a certain book can often be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
How to Create Good Book Metadata
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. Creating a list of relevant and targeted keywords and phrases enables you to write a keyword-rich author bio and book description to give the search engines a reason to bring attention to your book when users search for those words or phrases in particular.
For this reason, the most vital book metadata you’ll need to craft are:
- Keywords and keyphrases
- Book description using those keywords
- Author bio, also using keywords
Once you create a master document with this data you can use it to disseminate your book information in all kinds of places:
- Your ISBN record
- Your Lightning Source metadata for the book which is distributed to online retailers
- Any online retailer where you’re selling direct
- Your website, author page, and book pages
- Your Amazon Central author page
- Your Goodreads profile
- Social media profile pages
- Online interviews, guest blog posts, and other promotional appearances
Creating a master document for your book metadata is a huge time saver when you realize how many places this data will be placed. Keep this document handy and refine it over time. Revisit it every few months, to make sure it remains relevant.
Keywords and Key Phrases
Lightning Source will accept up to 500 characters for keywords. Many retail websites only use the first 350 characters (including spaces).
Record words and short phrases you think your readers might enter into a search engine or website to find you and your book. The more specific the keywords and phrases are, the more likely the person searching for those specific words will be happy to find your book among the search results.
Enter your keywords and phrases to find books like yours on Amazon, and if those terms do not return books that are like yours, try again. Then use the Google Keyword Search tool to help you think of other keywords for your book. Google Keyword Search will show you how popular those keywords are (volume data) and help you find keywords with lower competition.
Try to keep the number of repeated keywords to a maximum of three. Work on this task until you have a final list of 10 to 20 words.
Provide at least 7-11 keywords or phrases in your metadata and enter the most important keywords and phrases first. Return to Google Keyword Search every few months to evaluate new trends, check popularity and volume, and improve your keyword list. These same top keywords and phrases should appear in all of your book descriptions wherever possible. For more information see our metadata checklist and keyword brainstorming sheet.
Book Description
Make the description informative to users first and search engines second, and remember, it’s better to go narrow than wide, and more specific than general. When buyers come to your book sales page they should be compelled to buy—not click off because they were lured in falsely. Your book descriptions should be attention-grabbing, keyword-rich copy that sells your books. For more info on writing book descriptions see here.
Author Bio
Similarly, your author bio, like your book description, should be succinct and keyword-rich. The initial search of your potential reader is your first opportunity to make an impression, so make sure you’re using the right book metadata and keywords to do it.
For additional information about how metadata goes hand in hand with book discovery see our Metadata & Discoverability guide.
What book information can be updated after publication?
Some parts of metadata can be updated or added after publication such as keywords, subject categories, the book description, and pricing. Other parts of metadata cannot or should not be changed, such as the ISBN or the title of a book. Changing the title name of a book without changing the ISBN can result in confusion among book buyers and in the marketplace, which we all want to avoid.
Lightning Source recommends that you do not change the title of your book after it’s been shared with book buyers through enabling distribution. If the title of a book needs to be changed for any reason, it is best practice to set up a new title with a new ISBN/EAN and a new cover file that displays the new title of the book.
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