Weekly Writers: Metadata About Your Book

Including tips on choosing keywords

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Metadata

Because of my librarian past, the word metadata means a lot to me. Basically it is data used to describe things, in order to make it easier to find the relevant item later. A common example is emails, which include metadata about who sent them, and the time of sending.

Metadata in our context is bibliographic information (words and numbers) regarding your book. A book’s title, author, and date of publication are examples of book metadata. The back of the title page in a printed book is basically just a long list of bibliographic metadata.

Some of it enables readers to find you and your work: for example, when they type keywords into a search engine, including those for online bookshops. Other parts enable bookshops and online stores to correctly categorise your book.

Sometimes a book’s title is ambiguous and gives little away. But the metadata – book description, genre/category, and keywords – would clarify the book’s contents in great detail. When someone searches for the kind of book they are interested in, the search engine will look at all this metadata and find things that seem relevant. So metadata is important for making a book discoverable. To readers. Ideally, the right readers, your target audience.

So, at some point in the publication process, someone needs to make decisions on this kind of metadata, since it ties in to distribution and marketing.

Keeping Track Of It

You should record your book’s metadata, whether you are traditionally published or an independent author. It’s useful for marketing, interviews, administration, and many other purposes where you want to quickly check an ISBN, blurb, or publication date. And that becomes even more vital once you’ve written a number of books.

There are decisions to make.

• Firstly, what software will you use? A basic word-processed document is fine, with headings for each data type. Or, if you prefer spreadsheets, use one of those to store all the information. They can tabulate word-based data as well as numerical data. You could even use a database, if you are familiar with those.

• Secondly, will you store the metadata for all your books in one document, or in separate ones, with one document per book (or series)? The former system makes it easier to compare data between books, but the second can be less cluttered. If you use spreadsheets then all the data for every book could go in a single sheet, with each book on a separate row, and columns for each type of metadata. Or each book could go on a separate sheet within the document.

• Finally, what metadata will you record? I’m going to cover the main options here, and in later posts.

As with all these things, it’s up to you what system fits best with the way you work and think, and exactly what you record. I’m just here to provide options.

Now let’s take a dive into the world of book metadata you might record in your document.

Primary Metadata Types

Title

The title of the book is a key element to tie other data to. Its subtitle is another part of the metadata.

Format

Ebook, audiobook, printed book. If printed then there are other things to record. Is it a paperback or hardback? What is the trim size? What is the paper type? I often just record the colour e.g. cream or white, but you could include details of paper quality and weight. It is also useful to record the cover finish: matt or gloss.

Series

If relevant, record what number the book is in that series, e.g. Lost Solace Book 5.

Keywords

A list of keywords (sometimes called tags) related to the title. They can reinforce the genre or niche the book fits into. Usually a comma or semicolon is used to separate keywords.

Keywords can be single words, or they can be phrases. This is important, because the key phrase “sugar daddy” means something totally different to the separate keywords “sugar” and “daddy”. Further, putting them together as a phrase means a search engine can use synonyms – “Oh, the customers searched for books about sugar daddies, I’ll also display books that include rich older men having affairs with younger women”.

How many keywords do you need? The list won’t be endless: choose the seven best. This forces you to focus on the key fingerprint elements, rather than spamming with every possible keyword. As every writer should know, targeted and specific is more powerful than word soup.

I put mine in priority order, separated by semicolons. E.g. for Lost Solace the current keywords are:

tough female protagonist; space opera; artificial intelligence; first contact; aliens; suspense; spaceships

The keywords chosen may be refined and change over time.

Keywords are used in setting up a title for distribution, as it helps to guide vendors as to what genre or subject categories the book will go in. As such, they are more than just a piece of metadata: they can be the foundation for your marketing ideas, imagery, advertising campaigns that target keywords, and design choices. Some people use them as the foundation of their blurbs, making sure the keywords are sprinkled throughout as a way of reinforcing them. I’ll talk more about blurbs soon.

Top Tip: Keyword Considerations

I focus on these categorisations when generating my first list of keywords.

• Describing the main character: divorced dad, superspy, strong female lead, geeky character, military protagonist, plucky young heroine, underdog hero.

• The places where the story is set: Wales, islands, rural, Manchester, urban.

• The time period: far future, prehistoric, Renaissance, Victorian, contemporary.

• The mood or tone: horror, feel-good, funny, romantic, nostalgic, mourning, suspenseful, dark, life-affirming, practical, wholesome, creepy, dystopian.

• Themes and major topics: revenge, coming of age, xenophobia, first love, survival, families, love, music, physics, relationships, big decisions.

• The subgenre: folk horror, alien invasion, first contact, urban legends, space opera, military sci-fi, short stories, evil scientists, deep sea horror.

• Or even just describe other things that play an important part in the book: monsters, art, supernatural, scary stories, artificial intelligence, aliens, spaceships, chess, kidnap, robots.

It helps to think like a reader. What might they want to feel, or search for? Test those keywords in Amazon’s book search, or a search engine, or other book sites, and see if they bring up books like yours. The suggested terms offered by the site can be useful additions or refinements, based on what other people have searched for.

Some final do’s and don’ts:

• Keywords and key phrases should be specific. Don’t use vague ones like “fiction”.

• If you’ve used keywords in your title or subtitle you don’t need to repeat them in the keywords fields.

• Don’t refer to other authors (or their books or series) in your keywords – that can get you in trouble for being misleading.

• Don’t bother with variant spellings or phrasings. If you have artificial intelligence as a key phrase, don’t waste others on AI, A.I., and artificial intelligences – just stick to one version.

Now let’s think about Subject Categories …