Sometimes in publishing, it’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you don’t know that you don’t know. The unknown unknowns can get you into trouble.

One thing many authors don’t even think to ask about is metadata.

Hold on to your horses, ladies and gentlemen, because we are going to nerd out today about metadata with Joshua Tallent. Joshua is a metadata expert who got his start in publishing by creating ebooks for Bible applications. He’s been working in publishing in one form or another since 2002. He’s become a leading expert in the Kindle ebook format.

Today, Joshua serves as the Director of Sales and Education at Firebrand Technologies, a company that helps publishers manage internal workflows, digital distribution, and marketing efforts.

What is metadata, and why is it important?

Thomas: A lot of people hear the word “metadata” and immediately tune out. Maybe they’ve heard it in the context of government surveillance and think, “Wait, books have metadata?” What is metadata?

Joshua: Metadata is data about data. In publishing, that means everything about your book, including title, author, description, BISAC subject categories, and anything you want a retailer or a reader to see and understand so they can find and buy your book. That’s metadata.

Thomas: Why is metadata important?

Joshua: There’s a direct relationship between the data you provide to retailers and your book sales. If you’re shopping on Amazon and there’s no good description for a product, you’re probably not going to buy it. You don’t know what it does or whether it’s for you.

In a bookstore, you can look at the cover, title, and author, and flip through the pages. Online, you can’t do that. If there’s no description, keywords, or preview, you’re far less likely to buy. So metadata for a book is even more critical than for other products.

Let’s say you’re looking for a Christian book about a specific topic or a book of the Bible. If the metadata doesn’t make that clear, you won’t find it, and you definitely won’t buy it.

Thomas: I worked with a company that had just acquired a struggling publisher. They brought in all these books that weren’t selling well. The first thing they did was clean up the metadata. It was a mess.

I was stunned by how much that one improvement boosted sales. Once you fix the metadata, it’s done. The book ranks better on Amazon, more people see it, and they’re more likely to buy it.

A lot of authors think that when their book is listed on Amazon, someone at Amazon opens the book and types up the information. But that’s not how it works. No human at Amazon ever sees your book unless it’s sold. In fact, for many indie authors, the book isn’t even printed until it’s sold.

All the data, including description, keywords, cover image, and more, are provided by the publisher. If you’re indie, the same information is provided to Amazon by you.

Joshua: Yes, and there’s clear data showing the impact of good metadata. Nielsen did a study in 2016 looking at metadata and sales in the U.S. They analyzed 2.5 million titles that sold within a year.

Of the top 100,000 bestselling titles—which accounted for 86% of all sales—the metadata made a major difference. For example:

• Having basic metadata led to 75% to 170% higher sales
• Cover image: 51% higher sales
• Book description, author bio, and reviews: 72% higher sales
• Keywords: 34% higher sales

Even among bestsellers, the quality of metadata significantly influenced performance.

Why is metadata worth the effort?

Thomas: A 70% increase in sales is huge. This isn’t like running ads where you keep paying. Once you input the metadata, you’re done.

For some publishers, it’s a financial investment to pay someone to do it. But for many authors, it only costs the time and effort of sitting down and filling out those little boxes. It’s easy to skip them or leave them blank.

At publishing houses, the person responsible for metadata is often the lowest-paid person in the company. Sometimes even an intern.

This work is incredibly important. Having the right keywords and description is what makes a difference.

Because Amazon’s search engine isn’t like Google’s.

What are some tips for selecting good keywords?

Thomas: Web pages have metadata too, including a keywords field. But Google ignores that field now because people abused it. Typing keywords into your website doesn’t affect your Google ranking anymore.

Joshua: But it does affect your ranking on Amazon.

Thomas: Right. Amazon’s search engine is more like Google circa 2002. So keywords still matter there. Let’s talk strategy. What are some tips for selecting good keywords?

Joshua: First, get out of your own head.

Most publishers and authors create keywords based on what they think is important. But what actually works is thinking like your reader. Research shows that the more you understand your consumer, the more effective your keywords will be.

Keywords affect discoverability. They don’t directly impact sales, but they help readers find your book. Whether or not they buy it depends on the cover, description, and other metadata.

So your goal with keywords is to get your book to show up in more search results. That means using the words your readers are using.

Look at your book reviews. What are readers saying? What phrases do they use? Use those as keywords.

We worked with a client in the education space who created books for teachers of children with autism. After analyzing their audience, they realized most of their buyers were actually parents of children with autism, not just teachers. So they changed their metadata to reflect that and saw an increase in sales.

How often should you update your metadata?

Joshua: Metadata is not a set-it-and-forget-it task. It should be iterative.

Most publishers input metadata once and move on. But you should go back every three to six months and refresh it. Update your keywords, your book description, and even your author bio.

Doing this tells Amazon that something has changed, which may trigger its algorithms to re-index your book. It also ensures that your content reflects current realities, not just what your book was about two years ago.

By keeping your metadata up to date, you keep your book relevant to the algorithms and to your readers.

Why is metadata an ongoing process?

Thomas: I love what you said about metadata being an iterative process.

When you’re iterating, you’re making small changes over time. The temptation in publishing is to release a book and never touch it again. Maybe you promote it, but the book itself stays frozen in time. That made sense when books were only printed, but now, with print-on-demand, short-run printing, and ebooks, books can evolve, and so should their metadata.

Even if you printed a million copies, the artifact doesn’t change, but your understanding of the book does.

I love the idea of pulling keywords from reader reviews. It’s like running a focus group, but instead of paying $10,000, you just spend 20 minutes reading what actual readers are saying. These are people who paid money for your book and are giving you real feedback. That’s incredibly valuable.

A publisher releasing 52 books a year probably isn’t thinking about your book anymore, especially if it’s not a bestseller. But you are still thinking about your book. You can go back and update the metadata, suggest changes to your publisher, or, if you’re indie, just do it yourself. This isn’t just a publisher’s job. Every author needs to think about metadata.

Joshua: Yes, and backlist titles are becoming increasingly important. Major publishers are seeing more sales and revenue from their backlists. Print-on-demand and online selling have extended the “long tail” of book sales. A book that was a bestseller four, eight, or even twenty years ago can still sell today.

These older titles now compete directly with new frontlist titles in online search results. If two books cover the same topic, they’re going to compete regardless of when they were published.

Do older books have an advantage?

Thomas: In some ways, yes. Older books can have more reviews, which is a major advantage. Unless a book came out in the 1990s, before Amazon reviews existed, it probably has a strong review history. If your book has been getting 50 reviews a year for 10 years, that’s 500 reviews. A brand-new title may only have 50.

Joshua: Exactly. Independent authors talk about this a lot in fiction. If you write a series and release Book 2 or 3, you often see increased sales for Book 1. So it’s important to go back and update the metadata for those earlier books.

If you’re on Book 4 in a series, your metadata skills have probably improved. What you wrote for Book 1 is likely not as good. Go back and revise it. Even if the older title isn’t in the same series, if it’s related in theme or audience, it’s worth updating.

Thomas: I’ve seen this personally. I got caught up in a newer series about dragons, then realized it was set in the same universe as an earlier series by the same author. I went back and bought the earlier series too. Series metadata matters.

In some stores, like Audible, the metadata connects the audiobook and narrator. For a series, you can click the series name and see all the titles in the correct order. But if your metadata isn’t consistent, you will end up with two series listings instead of one, which will dilute all your other marketing efforts. Even something as small as an extra space in the series name can break that connection.

That’s why you can’t just set the metadata. You have to check that it’s displaying correctly on each store. Otherwise, you may be missing out on sales.

Joshua: Every store displays metadata differently. That’s one of the big frustrations we see in our work. You may send the right data, but the retailer doesn’t use it or doesn’t use it correctly.

The series field is a common issue. On some retail sites, it’s not shown at all. There’s no clear indication that the book is part of a series, or what order it belongs in. The reader is left to figure it out on their own.

Is Christian book metadata different?

Thomas: Metadata can get complicated. Is there anything different about metadata for Christian books?

Joshua: Yes. For Christian publishers, metadata is often influenced by the book’s genre or purpose. For example, if you’re publishing a Bible or a Bible commentary, you need more detailed metadata than you would for a secular book.

Amazon’s Bible store allows customers to sort by features like red-letter text, whether it includes a ribbon, and whether it’s the full Bible or just the New Testament. Those features are part of your metadata.

If you don’t provide that data, your Bible won’t appear in those filtered searches. That can hurt your sales.

Thomas: Exactly. If you paid extra to include a ribbon in your Bibles but didn’t tag it in the metadata, you won’t show up in the list of Bibles with ribbons. That money was wasted from a marketing perspective.

Joshua: The same applies to series. For example, if you have a Bible commentary series, consistency is critical. The series name needs to be the same across all the books.

And it’s not just about what you send to the retailer; it’s also about what you display on your own website. Do you have a list of all the books in the series in the correct order? Do you have strong descriptive copy?

When I search for a book, I’d rather see the publisher’s website first. I want to see what they say about the book. Publisher sites often include extras like videos with the author and other helpful content that Amazon doesn’t offer.

Why is metadata even more important for Christian books?

Joshua: In the Christian world, metadata becomes even more important. If I don’t know the publisher but have a specific denominational or theological perspective, I want to know whether the book aligns with my beliefs or whether it’s something I want to read to challenge my beliefs. That kind of clarity helps readers choose the right book, and you often don’t get that level of detail on Amazon. The publisher’s website becomes essential for that deeper understanding.

Thomas: My team at AuthorMedia.com developed a WordPress plugin called My Book Table, which became the most popular bookstore plugin for WordPress. One of the features we focused on was robust metadata support. We added fields for things like series name and series number.

We learned that we couldn’t limit series numbers to whole numbers. Authors would write Book 1, then Book 2, and later come back with a short story labeled Book 1.5, or even Book 0.5. So we adapted the plugin to handle all kinds of numbering and still show everything in the right order. Some publishers use it because you can click on the author’s name and see all their books, each linked to various bookstores.

A lot of publishers still manage this manually and spend a lot of money paying web developers to make those changes by hand. It was a great education in how diverse metadata can be. For instance, Bibles have very specific metadata fields, and children’s books need to include the illustrator. On the other hand, no one buys a romance novel because of who the cover designer was.

The narrator field becomes essential for audiobooks. So metadata varies based on the format and category of the book.

Is ebook metadata different from print book metadata?

Joshua: Typically, yes. It can differ for several reasons. For example, if you’re publishing a Bible commentary and have to cut 20 pages from the print version, you might include that content in the ebook at no extra cost. The ebook could be an expanded version, and that can be noted in the metadata. You might also include videos or enhancements.

Another area where ebooks differ is accessibility. From a Christian perspective, accessibility is crucial. Many readers need large fonts or text-to-speech support. If your ebook is designed to be accessible, your metadata can reflect that. This helps readers with disabilities discover your book and know it supports the features they need.

What metadata mistakes should you avoid?

Joshua: A big one is incomplete metadata. Many publishers stop at a book description and author bio. They forget to include excerpts. Reading the first chapter helps readers decide if they like the writing style or the story.

Also, publishers often don’t revisit their metadata. You should regularly update it. Look at new reviews and turn those into updated keywords or revised descriptions. Metadata is evergreen, and it should evolve over time.

Thomas: If you get new endorsements from a well-known pastor who emails to say they loved your book, ask if you can include that blurb in your metadata. It will show up on Amazon and other retailers. You don’t need to change the cover or interior. You just copy and paste the text, but it can make a huge difference.

Joshua: Same with awards. If your book wins a Christy Award or something similar, add it to the metadata. Don’t just add it to the cover; put it in the description so people can see it right away.

How can authors see and manage their metadata?

Thomas: At this point, listeners are probably convinced metadata is important. How can an author see and check their metadata?

Joshua: Just go to your book’s page on Amazon or any other retailer. Look at the details:

• Is the title correct?
• Is the subtitle there?
• Is the series name listed?
• Is the pub date right?
• Is the price correct?

Then look at the book description.

• Is it formatted correctly?
• Does it have paragraph breaks, bolding, and italics?
• Do you see a book excerpt?
• Are endorsements there?
• Is there an author bio?

These are all visible and make up your metadata.

Each website is different. Amazon’s display differs from Walmart or ChristianBook.com. Sometimes the formatting breaks during upload, so you may need to fix it in the system you used to submit it, whether that’s an ONIX file or a web dashboard.

If you’re not tracking your metadata already, start now. Whether you have one book or 200, gather everything in one spreadsheet, Word doc, Google Doc, or whatever works for you. That way, if you want to list the book on a new site, the information is ready.

Once you reach 100 or 200 titles, start exploring database solutions so you can send consistent metadata to all retail partners. That’s where tools really start to help.

Thomas: And your company, Firebrand Technologies, builds those tools.

Joshua: There are several companies that offer solutions, but yes, at FirebrandTech, our specialty is helping publishers manage that workflow. I’m always happy to help or answer questions. The key is to keep your data organized, up to date, and accessible.

What if an author sees incorrect metadata?

Thomas: If a traditionally published author sees incorrect metadata or that their Christy Award is missing, what should they do?

Joshua: They should contact their main contact at their publisher, whether it’s the editor, marketing, or publicity person, and they will know who to reach internally to get it fixed.

Thomas: If you’re indie, you control your metadata through your KDP dashboard. If you’re using IngramSpark or KDP, you’ll see all the metadata fields there. It’s basically a web form where you just log in and make the changes.

KDP is owned by Amazon, and they’ll tell you it takes 24 to 48 hours to update. That’s because Amazon uses very complex caching to serve billions of web pages quickly. The downside is that changes aren’t instant. Even reviews take a while to post. So be patient.

Any final metadata tips?

Joshua: Just remember, even retailers like Barnes & Noble can take a week or two to reflect changes. Sending the updated metadata doesn’t mean it’ll appear immediately.

Thomas: Metadata is a long-term game. It’s a pull technology, not a push technology, so things move more slowly. Authors are used to hearing “be patient” from their publishers, but this is where publishers have to be patient.

Connect with Joshua Tallent

FirebrandTech.com

• Twitter: @jtallent
• FireBrandTech.com

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