Metadata guide
Metadata sounds more complex than it is. It's really just a few bits of information about your book that get sent to retailers. Bits like title, author name, description, keywords, subject categories and so on. It tells them what your book is about, who wrote it and where it belongs.
When your book is done, we ask you to complete this information in our Authorzone. This is one of the bits we really do need from you. After all, nobody knows this book better than you. So here's a bit of a guide to what should go in each box.
Title and subtitle
This one's easy. Enter your title as it appears on your book. For a subtitle, place as a separate field, don't try to bolt it on to create one giant heading. Do double-check all your spelling and capitalization though. You really want to avoid having two slightly different entries floating about the internet.
The Quiet Path Home
Subtitle: A Journey Through the Hills
Author name
So this is your name. The specific version of it that you want to appear against your book. How do you want to be known? Typically your full name or a version including some initials. In some cases people write under a pen name. There isn't a right or wrong answer. But once you've chosen, stick with it. Everywhere. Retailers simply don't realize that Sarah L Martin, Sarah Martin, Sarah L. Martin and S. L. Martin are all the same person.
Author: Sarah L Martin
Your bio
This is not your life story. One paragraph is plenty. Write in the third person and just tell readers things like what you write, where you're based, any particular experience connected to the subject, and maybe a couple of human details at the end. 40 to 80 words will typically be about right.
Sarah L Martin lives in Somerset. She worked as a primary school teacher for 17 years before leaving teaching in 2021. The Quiet Path Home is her first novel and she is currently working on a second.
Book description
This is the bit people will see when they find your book online, so don't think of it as some dry summary for a database. It's there to make somebody want to read the book.
For fiction, introduce the main character and situation without giving everything away. For nonfiction, explain what the book is about, who it's for and what a reader gets from it. And keep it tight, somewhere around 100 to 200 words is usually plenty.
Anna hasn't been home since she was eighteen. When her mother dies, she returns to Somerset to clear out the house and expects to be gone within a week.
In the loft she finds a bundle of letters her mother had kept for years. Some are addressed to Anna. Others raise questions about things she thought she already knew.
Keywords
Keywords are the words and phrases that help readers find your book. The easiest way to think about them is to imagine you're looking for this sort of book but didn't know its title. What would you type into a search box?
Somerset; village novel; family secrets; coming home; mother and daughter; contemporary fiction; first novel
You can give us up to seven. Try to make them useful not clever, and don't waste them repeating things the retailer already knows from the title or other metadata. Phrases are often better than single isolated words too. English countryside novel tells us considerably more than simply English.
Subject codes
This tells the book trade what sort of book you've written. Books have standard subject codes so retailers can put them into categories. A gardening book shouldn't end up under business management just like a murder mystery doesn't belong amongst children's picture books. You get the idea.
The important thing is to be specific. A broad category might technically be correct, but a more precise one gives retailers much more useful information.
Primary category: Fiction, Contemporary Women
Secondary category: Fiction, Family Life
Tertiary category: Fiction, Small Town and Rural
If this bit feels less obvious, don't worry. This is something we can help you with.
Don't overthink it
Metadata matters. But just be accurate, careful and consistent and you'll be absolutely fine.
Plus we review this information before your book goes out, so if you've stared at a subject list for twenty minutes and can no longer tell whether your book is Family Life or Small Town and Rural, just check with us. Getting all of this information set up properly with the retailers is part of our book publishing services. You provide the information about your book, and we'll take care of getting it where it needs to go.