March 29th, 2020
For my new column in Publishers Weekly I’ve tried to reimagine metadata as a game. Not quite a board game; maybe a parlor game.
When it comes to book publishing, metadata is a game of chance. We don’t know which BISAC categories work best for any particular title, which keywords outperform, or how to write the perfect book description. We don’t know how many additional copies we’ll sell when we encourage the author to fill in their Amazon author page. How many reviews are too few — or too many?
This is a play-at-home metadata game for house-bound publishing staff. I’ve got two goals. The first goal is to discover which metadata enhancements are worth the effort, which ones offer an ROI. The second goal is to get publishing staff across the company to gain a better sense of metadata’s value.
Play on…