Book Metadata
Your book metadata will include such items as: title, author name, book format, ISBN, imprint, rights, publication date, price, contributors, keywords, BISAC subjects, age rating, author bio, blurb, etc. All very, very important, and all worth spending time preparing so that when you need to enter it, you do it once, and you do it right!
Places that ask for this metadata are: NielsonIQ BookData, Amazon KDP, IngramSpark. Nielsen and IngramSpark are especially important for me, as these push out to global catalogues, allowing retailers to find full details of your book, extracts of which they list on their websites as part of their listing. Without that metadata they don’t know book genre, price, format … anything. You must get this metadata out there. And get it out well in advance of your publication date. And I mean months and months before.
For UK authors, I recommend starting with Nielsen and their TitleEditor. Set this up as far in advance of your publication date as you can. And, as I said above, spend time prepping it and getting it right. It is one of the most valuable uses of your time in this phase of your publishing journey.
My strong recommendation is that you take a first look at what Nielsen asks for, and set up a spreadsheet with the data you want to add. I set up a spreadsheet for each book with the following tabs: Bio, Book Description, Paperback, Hardcover, Book Links. I’ll leave the Book Links for now, but just to say that it’s worth capturing the common web links to your book in this spreadsheet, e.g. KDP, Waterstones, B&N, Goodreads, Bookbub, etc.
Bio.
You’ll need your regular full bio, and you’ll need variations of that for use in those places that restrict the character count. I adapted mine as I went, and I captured the variations in this sheet for future reference.
Book Description
A full description, a short description, an even shorter description! Descriptions for retailers, descriptions for marketing, descriptions for promotions. I have a sheet with 25 rows of various descriptions I used over time – just for one book. Maybe you’ll be much smarter!
Paperback
This sheet was my main record of all the various other metadata needed – see example list at the start of the blog. Nielsen ask for a heap, KDP some extra/different, and so too IngramSpark. Capture it all here. Believe me, it saves time in the long run, and critically ensures consistency. Consistency is key! This ensures everything joins together in everybody's databases.
Hardcover
This is really a duplicate of the Paperback sheet. Except it has a different ISBN and a different price. And keeping the two separate means you use the right data for the right book format.
Bottom line. Spend time getting this right before you start entering it into the real world.