As many of you already know, I was in The Big Apple last week speaking at Digital Book World. After Mike Shatzkin’s interview with me and Hugh Howey, I sat on a panel with my fellow agents Jane Dystel, Steve Axelrod, and Jay Mandel.
My question was this: “What should Publishers be learning from authors who are self-publishing?”
My answer was twofold:
1) Authors who are successfully self-pubbing release a lot of content and a variety of content regularly. For example, one of my authors publishes 2 novels a year but also publishes short content in between the major releases to keep the momentum going. Also, successful self-pubbers do a VARIETY of content. If one work is building (and therefore more appealing to the audience), then the author will set aside the other content and focus on what is building momentum. Because the author is in full control of the publishing, she can make that decision quickly and immediately act on it.
Publishers need to find a way to do the same.
2) Second, success is all about the metadata. Most editors input the metadata tags when the author contract is submitted and then don’t think about it again. Well, that’s not what successful self-pubbers are doing and that’s not what we do at NLA digital either. We are constantly tweaking.
For those of you wondering what the heck is metadata, these are the descriptive tags included in product description and in a lot of cases, embedded in the content file itself of electronic books, that allow a novel to be searchable and discoverable on distribution venues such as Amazon, BN, and Kobo.
I tell a great story about what was unfolding, literally, the week of DBW. And now I can share it with you. Some enterprising videographer filmed me while speaking (so thank you BookMarketingAME). The video starts a little shaky but evens out. Hear it for yourself.
And here is the visual I didn’t include at DBW but can share with y’all via the power of my blog. *grin*
The author’s editor is the true heroine of the story for being persistence with her internal team to get the metadata fixed. Within 12 hours of it happening, voila! This title was not even showing up in the top 100 or even the top 250 in ranking in this category until the fix.
And yes folks, that’s the importance of Metadata in a nutshell.
Tags: Amazon, Digital Book World, metadata
That was one of the most interesting videos I’ve seen in a long time. And such a great example of how important it is for an author to embrace the emerging technologies.
Wow! I love seeing/reading things like that. I definitely hope publishers catch on. Also – feel better!
Truly, I appreciate the advice on building an audience and how to continue momentum with that audience. As I pursue the potential of self-publishing, it is best to have a good understanding of what the successful ones have done.
I have more.
Thanks! I will start watching the meta-data tags more. I have tweaked my first book meta data, but not the 2nd. I never thought of entering a competing author’s name in as a meta data. Good thoughts. Great video.
It’s great that publishers are learning from self-publishers because that would increase the efficiency of the publishing industry in general.
Yes, most of us who self-publish have learned the power of metadata. Readers can’t enjoy your work if they can’t find it.
I know metadata can improve your rankings drastically. I changed some of mine last week and hit the Nook Top 100 for the first time ever, peaking at #4.
However, just be aware that it’s against Amazon’s TOS to enter another author’s name or book title in your metadata. If they feel your metadata is misleading in any way you will receive a VERY scary email from the KDP compliance team.
Excellent post! Thank you so much for sharing this explanation of the impact of meta-data. Ever since I heard about your comment the other day in a summary about DBW, I was wondering exactly what you had meant. Now, I know!
This is such smart advice. I worked in advertising SEO for awhile, and metadata/keyterms were HUGE. Researching what keyterms were hot, tweaking and angling all the time to hit high in the search results. It didn’t occur to me then that this would be useful in publishing down the road, but your example shows just how big a deal it is in every marketing arena.
Yikes! Amazon seems to have taken down tags. I wonder how else authors can control the metadata.
I don’t know why Amazon took down tags on the purchase page, but you can still enter “categories” when you are in the KDP editing pages. I tweaked mine about a week ago, and hit several Top 100 lists the next day.
Thanks for the info– and congrats on working with Hugh Howey!
Really great detective work. I love it. How can you see your meta data tags Barnes and Noble? Also How can you see other peoples meta tags? I would love to know.
Susan at Pen and Ink
Really glad I caught your comments at DBW13 so I wrote about them on my blog. http://lastgenerationbc.com/2013/01/5-tips-for-authors-from-the-top-conference-on-e-books-and-book-publishing/#comments Any author, fic or non-fic like I am, could use help from get-go with metadata positioning.
This article was incredible. I had never even considered self-publishing digitally before, and I didn’t want to pay someone to publish my books for me because of the negative stigma attached to self-published writers. Whether right or wrong, admit it folks, there is a stigma. I am still going to submit to agents, but if I don’t receive any feedback soon, I will research the heck out of e-books, self-publishing and promotion, and metadata……..
I am in the process of publishing my first book, learning as I go. what advice do you have for new writer to the market trying to get a book published.
in reading some of the comments here leaves me inspired.
thank you
Lois