1. Book Metadata Describes Your Book
Title metadata can be used to describe what a book is about. Descriptive metadata should include elements such as what genre the book fits into, who is telling the story, and keywords or information that will appeal to the intended audience. Specific descriptive information that includes terms like "beach read" or "authoritative biography" will help put the book title on the radar of readers who are looking for a certain kind of book.
2. Book Metadata Tells Librarians and Booksellers Where to Shelve Your Book (and Who'd Want to Buy It)
Including BISAC codes (subject categories) in a book's metadata explains what genre the book is. These codes allow marketers, retailers, librarians, online stores, search engines, and others to know where to shelve a book or how to locate it online. More than one BISAC code should be assigned to a book, to help narrow down the search and ensure it reaches the targeted potential audiences.
3. Book Metadata Sells Your Book to Consumers 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, categories, keywords, related titles, and the like. This makes the book easier to discover by potential readers—including those who already know the author's work and those who don't.
4. Metadata Provides Search Engines with the Perfect Answer
This is one of the most important aspects of metadata utilization. As noted above, book metadata can include all the answers readers have about a specific book—even if they don't know what book they are looking for. Including keywords, positive book reviews, and comments, authoritative recommendations, similarity to other titles, and everything else in the metadata means that search engines can find it. That's a big part of how specific books get into the hands of specific readers. It's especially important to include series information in the metadata, too. That's how readers can find the next book in a series like "Harry Potter" or "Game of Thrones".
5. Book Metadata Tells Readers Who You Are
Book metadata should include as much relevant information about the author as possible. Whether or not the author has received recognition, awards or special 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. For example, a writer who grew up in Ireland might have personal experience that lends itself to a book set during the time of—say, the Irish potato famine. American authors might write an equally well-written book about the Irish potato famine, but associations like this can help sell books.
6. Book Metadata Links You to Your Contributors
Information about illustrators, collaborators, other contributors, and even reviewers should be part of your title metadata. Searches for positive reviews by respected critics link authors to the critics —and the "paper" or online source for whom they write critiques. Similarly, 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. Collaborators want their work discovered, too, even if they only played a small part in a book; for instance, in writing a foreword or afterword.
7. Book Metadata Preserves Images and Illustrations
Many illustrators have dedicated followers who buy books solely for their artwork, some of which end up being highly collectible. Including the illustrator's information in the contributor section of the books, metadata helps books reach a wider audience and that means more sales. Furthermore, the metadata of illustration and image information ensures that pictures and artwork will not be lost in the dungeons of the World Wide Web. Authors will find that images that have been tagged with metadata are, and will always be, easy to access.
For more information on how to update your metadata on your Lightning Source account see here.
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