metadata

Smashwords Introduces New Metadata Option for Box Sets

by

This post by Mark Coker originally appeared on the Smashwords blog on 5/11/15.

Smashwords today released an enhanced metadata option for box sets. The new option will pave the way for us to make box sets more discoverable in the Smashwords store, and longer term (and more importantly), it will enable better merchandising at our retailers.

But one step at a time. First we need to collect the metadata, and that’s where you come in.

Smashwords authors and publishers are already well-versed in metadata. Metadata is data about your book. Metadata is comprised of things like book category, book title, author name, book description and price. Metadata makes it easier for readers to discover your book by screaming, “Look here! I’m what you’re looking for!”

Ebook box sets are a relatively new phenomena, and indie authors are leading the charge. Until now, metadata for box sets has been lacking. Most obviously, a box set is treated like an ordinary ebook, when in fact it’s a bundle of books either from a single author or multiple authors. Retailers have shown increased interest in box sets over the last two years, but the process of identifying them is still manual. Retailers who want to promote them, and customers who want to read them, must perform manual searches on the phrase “box set” and hope the author placed the words in their title or book description. That’s kludgey. There should be a special designation for box sets so retailers have the option to create custom virtual shelves to promote them, and so customers can easily find them.
 

Read the full post on the Smashwords blog.

 

How Keywords, Machine Learning Unlock Book Discovery

by

This post by Jim Bryant originally appeared on Publishing Perspectives on 5/4/15.

Jim Bryant of Trajectory.com argues that advancements natural language machine processing leading to keywords may unlock a revolution in book discovery.

Leading publishing industry analysts started highlighting the increasing urgency of developing better “book discovery” practices more than ten years ago. Several years ago, this issue was highlighted as one of the biggest challenges facing the future of the publishing industry. Today, no one in the publishing world is seriously debating the relevancy of “book discovery.”

The challenge of “book discovery” is highlighted by the well-accepted facts surrounding the notion that never before in history have so many books been available to so many readers.

– Hundreds of thousands of backlist titles are being released by publishers.

– Hundreds of thousands of self-published books are being offered by ebook retailers and self-publishing platforms.

– Hundreds of thousands of titles from foreign publishers are making their way into domestic supply chains.

 

Read the full post, which includes informative charts and graphics, on Publishing Perspectives.

 

How to Develop a Bestselling Book Idea

by

This post by Penny C. Sansevieri originally appeared on PR Toolkit on 8/21/14. Note that it is geared to writers of nonfiction.

With so many people jumping on the publishing bandwagon, it’s clear that anyone can write and publish a book these days. But there’s a difference between writing a book versus writing a book that will sell. Once you understand how to use keywords and research to your advantage, you can create a bestselling book, in particular, a book that will be a hit on Amazon. Here’s what you can do:

 

Where can you find ideas?

It starts with keywords. There are people who understand Search Engine Optimization to such a degree that they write books based on the most popular keywords that were top searches in Google. Why? Because those keywords are proven sellers. I don’t recommend this as a strategy for your book, but it does illustrate how important it is to write on a topic that already generates interest. This approach can help you resolve the following issues for your own book:

Book topic: You want your book to respond to the needs and questions of your audience. What do they want to know? How can you help them achieve their goals? You might not have to completely overhaul your original idea, but you can tweak your focus to respond to readers’ needs. And, since book production is a much faster process these days, you can respond to hot topics and trends quickly.

 

Read the full post on PR Toolkit.

 

Your Book’s Genre and Classification Matter

by

This post by Bob Hughes originally appeared on Beneath the Cover on 3/5/15.

For many novelists, the genre of their work matters a great deal. Even if there’s an element of fantasy in their work, they dread that it be labeled as something less than their ideal, as you can see from a New York Times interview with the acclaimed British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (“The Remains of the Day”), concerning his new novel, “The Buried Giant.”

He asks the Times reporter Alexandra Alter, “Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I’m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?”

A fantasy novel from a serious novelist! Oh, no. It shouldn’t matter for a writer as acclaimed as Ishiguro. But it does. Even though so-called literary novelists as celebrated as David Mitchell have explored fantasy in their work (such as Mitchell’s latest, “The Bone Clocks”), critics of literary fiction tend to look down on fantasy as a serious art form, despite the literary success of J.R.R. Tolkien or George R. R. Martin.

 

Read the full post on Beneath the Cover.

 

Attract National Media And TV By Using Keywords In Your Non-Fiction Book Title

by

This post by Joanna Penn originally appeared on her The Creative Penn site on 1/20/14.

Most marketing activities are (unfortunately) not directly measurable.

It’s widely agreed that the very best marketing is write a quality book, then write some more of them, and each of those books finding an audience will help market the other. I agree with that, but it generally takes a while!

You can buy advertising, which is measurable, or do other specific promotions. But for non-fiction in particular, there is one thing that makes a huge difference to sales, whether you have a platform or not.

Optimize your non-fiction book title for keywords people are actually searching for.

I’ve blogged before about the importance of keywords for metadata and discoverability, and that post contains the details of how to do the research and choose the right words.

I explained how I changed my book title from ‘How To Enjoy Your Job’ to ‘Career Change: How to stop hating your job, discover what you really want to do with your life and start doing it!‘ In this post, I’m going to outline some of the results of that book title change.

I can attribute pretty much everything to the book title alone, because this blog is not a platform for the topic of career change, I don’t tweet about it, or speak about it, or in fact, do anything at all to market that book other than have it in my blog header (which subscribers don’t even see). But the audience of this blog aren’t the target market for the book, so I would say that 90% of sales are due to the title alone.

Here’s how it works.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Creative Penn.