Metadata is used for many things, even in addition to the ones the NSA uses. In publishing, one of the simplest ways online to get more hits for your book is to have good descriptive metadata. Digital Book World brought this news to us in their article, “An Introduction to Effective and Descriptive Metadata.”
Descriptive metadata is self-defining—it’s metadata that describes the book and its creators. If metadata accurately describes the book, then when the customer reads a description matching exactly what they want, you’ve made a sale.
Having good keywords and subject codes makes it so the book can be found both more easily and where it’s supposed to be located. Customers may not know that they’re looking for your book, but having it in the right place can lead them to it.
If a customer already has an idea about the book they want to buy, or knows specifically about the book without knowing the title, keywords are there to help.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
