Confession: when I began to re-issue my out-of-print titles and assume the role of self-publishing author, I didn’t think about “metadata”. Actually, I never really understood what that meant, except as some weird kind of SEO (search engine optimization) thing. My publishers had always done that work for me.
Even the word “meta”, from the Greek, meaning “going beyond”, is more than a little weird. Going beyond what? Like some kind of magic that gets books in front of readers? Oh, how I wish.
When I began to set up my books on various platforms (i.e., IngramSpark, Draft2Digital) and ran into terms like “BISAC codes” and “thema”, I just kind of winged it as I launched these texts onto various sites. I even rewrote my book’s description differently with each platform.
That was a big mistake.
Amazon couldn’t link my ebook with my print book because I used different metadata for each. And that’s just for starters, now, in the age of AI.
I only began to figure out how big a mistake I’d made when I attended a couple of webinars, most recently one hosted by Authors Guild (wait, you aren’t a member yet? They work for us in a big way…)
I now know not only what metadata is, but how important it is to the discoverability of your book – how you need it in order to get your book into the hands of the right reader.
Because here’s the kicker. Whether you like AI or not, AI is now the search engine of choice for books. When someone is searching for their next read, more often than not that query for a book is answered by AI. And AI is quite particular about metadata, due to its inherent logical “thinking”.
The new SEO is GEO: generative engine optimization.
I decided that I’d better build some clear way to create metadata for each book, and that I needed to be clear across all platforms by conforming the book to that correct GEO metadata.
I generated a cheat sheet – and I’m giving it to you here – that allows me to track the entire book’s metadata suite as I understand it as of today.
I suggest you pay particular attention to a handful of things:
Your cover. Your cover is the most important SEO/GEO sales item for your book. As the AG folks said, “It’s the closer on the sale.” A bad or erroneously-configured (meaning, the wrong “look” for your genre) cover will lose you the sale. Get a pro to make your cover.
Your book’s description. The first 200 characters of your book’s description – that is, the first 200 characters (not words) of those paragraphs on Amazon – are the most important words you’ll ever write about your book. They must cover genre, setting, theme, tone, topic, emotional resonance. They must conform to reader search expectations. “Cozy beach read.” “Scary locked-room mystery.” Think TikTok verbiage. Work on those words hard.
Your website. Keep it up to date and polished. Make sure AI is able to crawl it for content. Make this content the same as it appears on all the websites featuring your book.
Take a look at your book’s description and cover. Talk to your publisher if something feels off. It’s no longer completely true that reviews will sell the book, because reviews can be confusing to AI. It’s the first sentence of your book’s description, your BISAC codes, and your cover that are most critical.
Honestly, this is where self-publishing shines: we can be ahead of the curve by understanding and responding to these fast changes in how and what people read more quickly than traditional publishing will.
Here’s my cheat sheet link again – my gift to you:
I have a new course, Claim Your Publishing Power, that walks through all the ways/steps/options to see your work in print today: traditional, hybrid, self-publishing. It includes suggestions for handling all of the nitty-gritty (including this stuff) no matter which path you take. I hope you’ll take a look.
Please keep writing! As always!
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