If you want readers to find your self-published work, you need to know about Metadata. To help, I’m linking to a very informative post called “A Self-Publisher’s Guide to Metadata for Books.” Wondering what metadata is? It’s keywords that drive searches. When someone is searching for your book, say on Google, they enter phrases or words. It could be your name or book title, but it could also be something like “sci-fi historical romance.” If you know your audience, you can determine what your meta tagwords are. [Be sure to come back this Thursday when Alex J. Cavanaugh will be here to talk about knowing your audience.]
Carla King, the author of this article, takes you through providing the metadata for your book. She covers these topics:
Identifying Your Keywords
Provide Metadata for Your Book on Bowker
Metadata in Documents and Other Media
Metadata on Reseller Sites
Metadata on Social Media Sites
The Future of Metadata
It’s a very interesting article – worth reading and saving for future reference. Using metadata points readers to your book.
How many of you use metadata? Did you know you can create metadata for your Facebook “like” page? Did you know when you upload your book in Kindle format to Amazon, you have an opportunity to create metadata that point to your book?
5 years ago
I read a lot about metadata and keep telling myself it's something I should be using! I need to do it--there's no reason not to. It's hidden and helps with Google rank results. :)
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ReplyDeleteI use Calibre on my computer to keep up with all my books and it uses Metabata to pull information in when I type in the name of a book. It fills in all the blanks and even gives a brief synopsis of the book to go with it. In addition, it can pull in the book cover.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that tip, Mason. I hadn't heard that about Calibre.
ReplyDeleteThis is information definitely worth keeping for future refrence. Thanks, Helen.
ReplyDeleteAs always, highly useful info Helen, Thanks for sharing. will save fro future reference ( & I learnt what metadata is!)
ReplyDelete(Hope Texas Book festival went well!)
Judy
That's good information for any author.
ReplyDeleteAnd looking forward to Thursday!
Filed for future reference. Thank you, Helen. I had not heard of Metadata. I know a few folk who will benefit from the article, and will forward it to them.
ReplyDeleteMetadata is new for me. Thanks for the info Helen - your site is always a gold mine for me :)
ReplyDeleteI like Mark Glaser. He has some terrific articles. I'll save this one and come back to it tonight when it quiets down around here. This is important and writers should be aware of Metadata.
ReplyDeleteStephen Tremp
Sounds like something useful and helpful for everyone. I'll be back to hear what Alex has to say.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info and link on Metadata. It is a topic that I know just enough to be dangerous--to this was helpful.
ReplyDeleteI've heard the term but I'm fuzzy as to how to use it. Thanks for the info!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for this info! I needed to do a bit more research into this and the article is a HUGE help!
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