Publish & Prosper
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Publish & Prosper
Mastering Book Metadata to Maximize Market Reach
In this episode, Lauren & Matt deep dive into book metadata and how it can better position your book in the market. Maximize your discoverability and reach with tips on choosing bookstore categories and BISAC codes, tools for keyword research, and best practices for making the most of your metadata.
Dive Deeper
š” Complete BISAC Subject Headings List
š” Bublish's AI Author Toolkit
š” Publisher Rocket
š” Listen to These Episodes
- Ep #34 | Hooking New Readers With a Compelling Book Description
- Ep #37 | How to Get Your Book Into Indie Bookstores
- Ep #51 | Finding Your Niche, Your Ideal Reader, and Your Target Audience
š” Read These Blog Posts
- SEO for Writers: A Deep Dive Into Keyword Research and Analysis
- Genres, BISAC Subject Codes, and You
- BISAC: What It Is and Why It Matters
š” Watch These Videos
Sound Bites From This Episode
šļø [3:02] āYour metadata is relevant to you if you're selling direct, if you're doing distribution, if you're sticking to a single ecommerce solution, whatever it is, no matter what you're doing, your metadata is relevant to your book.ā
šļø [15:28] āI think you should be marketing to human beings and not to algorithms.ā
šļø [32:21] āUnderstanding that to prepare yourself for a future where search looks different than it does now being as concise and specific with your keywords is going to be more important than ever.ā
š Canāt wait for our next episode? Check out our Resources page for links to our blog,
our YouTube channel, and more.
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š Email us at podcast@lulu.com
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Lauren: Hey everyone, welcome back to Publish & Prosper. Today we are going to get as close as I possibly can to my repeated threats to do an entire episode about ISBNs.
Matt: Did you hit record?
Lauren: Yes, I did.
Matt: Okay. Then I'll refrain from what I was gonna say.
Lauren: Okay. Thatās - I appreciate that.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, whatever.
Lauren: Look, I just love any opportunity to nerd out about books. We know this.
Matt: Yeah, no, I love that too. I just, ISBNs are the most boring part of the book industry and yet somehow or another that's the only way the book industry can find to track sales data, which is sad too.
Lauren: And all other kinds of data too.
Matt: Pretty much that as well, yeah.
Lauren: Which is actually what we're going to talk about today, which is book metadata and specifically like, what that is and how you can use it to position your book in the market. And hopefully maximize your chances of discoverability.
Matt: Yay. I should have brought a confetti cannon in here.
Lauren: We do have some spares up by the library.
Matt: Oh, we'll save those for something that truly is deserving of a confetti cannon.
Lauren: I look forward to that day.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And having to clean it up afterwards. Great. Itās fine.
Matt: I would help you clean it up.
Lauren: I appreciate that. Thanks.
Matt: All right.
Lauren: But yeah, no, I wanted to talk about metadata a little bit. I know it's kind of one of those things - actually, one of my favorite YouTube Shorts that we've ever created was about metadata. And it was, the way that Chelsea did it was just: metadata isā¦ boring. So I'm gonna overlay text about what metadata is on a nice scenic background of a lake during summertime and play some soothing music in the background. It's a great little Short.
Matt: I love it.
Lauren: But I - somehow I'm going to turn that boring one minute metadata into a full 45 minute podcast episode.
Matt: Can't wait.
Lauren: Yay.
Matt: Let's go.
Lauren: Okay. Great.
Matt: LFG.
Lauren: All right. Great way to get around that. Okay. So to start, basically, if you're not familiar with what metadata is, it's the information that describes your book to retailers, librarians, databases, search engines, internet algorithms, whatever you can think of. This is relevant no matter what your bookā¦ I mean, unless your book is like, you're never going to have it for sale anywhere. You are exclusively using it as something that you are like, hand giving out to people as like a lead gen tool. Your metadata is relevant to you if you're selling direct, if you're doing distribution, if you're sticking to a single ecommerce solution, whatever it is, no matter what you're doing, your metadata is relevant to your book.
Matt: Yeah. And, and even so, it's not a bad idea to still fill out the metadata sections if you have that ability based on where you're publishing or what you're doing. Yeah, there's that one situation where you don't necessarily need it, but you never know where your book could end up. And so having that metadata is, I still think, always helpful. Yeah.
Lauren: Absolutely. It is something that, you know, from a from a bookseller perspective, to give a little bit of context to this, like the bookstore that I worked at, when I say that we had the oldest computer systems known to man, I mean, they were literally like desktop computers that were exclusively black with yellow text on them. That's how old our computersā¦
Matt: They're one year older than the laptops we're using right now to record this podcast.
Lauren: Hey, don't -
Matt: Just kidding.
Lauren: Donāt knock our laptops.
Matt: JK.
Lauren: Although we're both getting new ones soon.
Matt: LOL.
Lauren: New sticker your opportunities.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But yeah, that was the kind of operating system that we were using. And the database that we would use for our entire inventory in the store was you would type the ISBN into the computer and it would bring up a book page that had all of this metadata information in it. And like, that's what we're trying to do here is have that - you want your book to have as much of that metadata information attached to the ISBN, or attached to your book details, so that you have everything there, searchable, accessible, and ready to go for anybody who's looking for your type of book.
Matt: Yeah, yep.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: It's, I think metadata is like, metadata to books are like your bracelets to you.
Lauren: Really? Draw that line, go ahead.
Matt: What do they say today?
Lauren: Today, my bracelets say Boycott Love, I Wish I Was Reading, and To The Core.
Matt: I stand by what I said.
Lauren: Okay. Yeah.
Matt: Metadata.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Describes the book, its categories, what it's about, what comp titles might be. Your bracelets describe who you are.
Lauren: That's so true.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Fair point.
Matt: Alright.
Lauren: Okay. Specifically when we're talking about metadata, I kind of grouped these, this long list of things into three different categories because there's one that we're really going to focus on today. So basic upfront details, your book title, your subtitle and your author name. That's a given. If you don't have that information, what do you have? You don't have a book. I don't know what to tell you.
The second category would be the book information, and that's the details like your edition type, whether that's paperback, hardcover, large print edition, abridged, unabridged, whatever kind of thing. Second edition if you've republished it. Publication date, copyright, publisher and imprint, ISBN, language, and intended audience. And by intended audience, I mostly mean age on that one. You don't have to get really specific with your target audience, but your book should be categorized if it's adult versus children's, young adult versus middle grade, etc. And that is all included in your metadata.
[5:59]
Lauren: But the thing that I really want to talk about today and kind of the whole point of this, and how you can use your metadata to position your book in the market, are the details that are your book description, your genre or bookstore categories, your BISAC codes, and your keywords. So that's what we're going to talk about.
Matt: So much fun.
Lauren: You like keyword stuff.
Matt: I do. I like discoverability.
Lauren: Yeah. I think it's really important as a topic. And I like BISAC codes and bookstore categories, so. Spoiler alert: of those topics, we are not going to talk about the book description because we already did a whole episode on that. So I do want to include that in here because we are going to mention it a couple of times - that because it is relevant to your metadata -
Mat:t: Yeah. Itās -
Lauren: - and that is how you use -
Matt: - relevant to discoverability.
Lauren: Yes, absolutely. But we did a whole specific episode on that that I will link in the show notes. If you want to go listen to it, it's episode number 34, but we're not going to repeat what we've already said about how to use your book description. Go listen to that episode instead.
Matt: No notes.
Lauren: Great. Just to clarify a little bit when we're talking about placement and discoverability and stuff like that, if you are not opting for global distribution, it's still relevant. Because your metadata is going to influence how your book shows up in Google search results.
Matt: That's right.
Lauren: In targeted advertising, even in things like social media algorithms, stuff like that. And if you are opting in for global distribution, your metadata tells third party retailers and libraries how to categorize your book, where it belongs in the market, who your target audience is. If you're someone like me and I get so bored with my own TBR that I wind up browsing the Libby app going through different categories for just what books are available for me to download right now in this specific category. Like this is the information that tells my library how to categorize that on Libby so that when I'm going through that app looking for things, it's delivering all the content to me.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So if you want your books to be discoverable by browsers, this is how you make it discoverable.
Matt: That's right.
Yeah. Okay. Nothing to add? No?
Matt: No.
Lauren: Okay. Don't worry. You'll have your time to shine.
Matt: I know I'm waiting. Iām patiently waiting.
Lauren: Appreciate the patience.
Matt: It's in short supply these days.
Lauren: I know. Do you want to say the first bullet point in the next section so that you pronounce it quote unquote correctly? I'll give you that one for free.
Matt: Yeah, so what she has outlined here is it's really important to know your niche, to understand your niche, your target audience, who you're talking to. And again, we won't go full length into this one. It appears that we talked about this a lot in episode 51, as noted by Lauren in this outline, around knowing your niche, but nonetheless, yeah, you really should understand your target audience.
That's going to set you up the best for success when you're trying to decide some of these pieces of information that you're going to need to be filling out and how that's going to shape the way your book is positioned in the market, and from a discoverability standpoint. So if you don't know your niche, your target audience, those, those things, make sure you spend a little bit of time really fleshing that out. And again, episode 51 will give you some more information around that one.
Lauren: Can I tell you a secret?
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: I said the phrase niche down the other day.
Matt: Because it doesn't sound right to say niche down.
Lauren: Correct.
Matt: Does it?
Lauren: Correct. I - that is absolutely it. It is still niche. The word is still -
Matt: Itās not.
Lauren: - the word is niche. But niche down does sound better than niche down.
Matt: You canāt say the riches are in the niches. You have to say the riches are in the niche.
Lauren: Oh I can though. Watch me.
Matt: No, absolutely not. And if anybody ever hears Lauren say the riches are in the niches, please, please, please email me and let me know.
Lauren: You have my full permission to do that.
Matt: Oh my god.
Lauren: But I did catch myself saying that you should niche down on something the other day.
Matt: Because subconsciously you know that is correct.
Lauren: No, I do not.
Matt: You know it is.
Lauren: Absolutely not.
Matt: You're absolutely wrong.
Lauren: But it does - it does sound better, I'll give you that.
Matt: Ugh.
Lauren: Consider that a win. Thatās a win.
Matt: Well, it is a win, for sure.
Lauren: Okay. I'm never going to agree with you on how to pronounce the word niche.
Matt: It's a backhanded win, but I'll take it.
Lauren: It counts for something.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Okay. But yeah, like Matt said, go listen to that other episode if you want to hear more about that. But it is very important to know because you won't be able to answer any of these other questions, categories, whatever, without understanding who your target audience is and what your niche is.
Matt: Yeah.
[10:26]
Lauren: Starting with your genre and or bookstore categories, you know, depending on what publishing platform you're on, they might call them different things, depending on what database. this is as relevant if you are uploading your book to Goodreads -
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - or submitting your book for a Goodreads profile page or something like that as it is to when you are publishing your book. These are things that we ask in the Lulu publishing tool as you're going through. We ask you what genre is your book and give you a drop down list of options.
Matt: Yeah, almost anybody's going to ask you this, regardless of how you're publishing or what you're doing, even if you're going to go out there and apply for your own ISBNs at Bowker or Nielsen and do a lot of this your own, these are all questions you're going to need to be able to answer. So the more skilled at it that you are, the better chance you're going to have of your book being found on whatever platform it is that you're posting it. But you have to understand those basics first, again, genre, category, things like that.
Lauren: Yeah. If you can't answer the question of what genre is your bookā¦ you got to start over. That's, that's the number one question that you have to be able to answer about your book. That's more important than your elevator pitch. That's the first thing that somebody is going to ask you if you say to them like, oh, I'm writing a book. Oh, what kind of book is it? What's it about?
Matt: Yeah. I mean, the fact that we're even given this airspace isā¦
Lauren: I know.
Matt: It's, it's like telling people not to eat Tide Pods.
Lauren: And yet.
Matt: Oh, I don't know. I don't even know if I believe that.
Lauren: That's fair.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But you know, obviously exactly what it sounds like on the tin, it's literally where you would go in the bookstore to find your book on a shelf.
Matt: Did you just say on the tin?
Lauren: Yeah, exactly what it says on the tin.
Matt: What does that mean?
Lauren: Like, I mean, I actually don't know if this is 100% accurate, but what I've always assumed it was, was if you're opening a can of food that has a label on the tin, it's exactly what it says on the tin. Like, there's no surprise. It's not surprise slop in there. It says it's beans. It's going to be beans when you open the can. Is that a new phrase?
Matt: I've never heard that and I've never heard you say that.
Lauren: Oh, I say it.
Matt: I've never heard you say that.
Lauren: Okay, well, it's not just me.
Matt: I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying I don't - I've never heard you say that. So you just kind of threw me a little bit. On the tin.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Okay. Yeah.
Lauren: Sorry. I don't know where it came from. Don't ask me.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Sounds like you got it down cold, though. So that's good.
Lauren: I should go back and find that book that I was reading that had that phrase in it.
Matt: Please do. Whatever imaginatory state you were in.
Lauren: I mean, it was definitely a Kindle Unlimited book, so.
Matt: There you go.
Lauren: Yeah, okay.
Matt: It doesn't exist anymore.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So when you talk, when we're talking about genres, consider them again, like you would if you were going into a bookstore, because there's genres and there's sub genres and most bookstoresā¦ if you're going to the horror section in a bookstore, there are six, seven, eight, ten sub genres of horror, but they're not all going to be broken out into those different sub genres on the bookstore shelves. There's going to be a section for horror.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: Right? So there's high level genres and thenā¦
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - the more niched down sub genres.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So keep that in mind as you're doing this and you want to be able to do both. You want to understand what your high level genre bookstore category, whatever, is, and then be able to dig down deeper into that into your sub genres. You're also going to need that for whether it'sā¦ you're going to start as high as like fiction versus nonfiction adult versus children. Children breaks down into different age audiences, and then within that, there's genres and then sub genres. You're going to g0 -
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - as high as you start and then work as far down as you can.
Matt: And it's, it's perfectly fine where, where you're able to to select multiples and or potentially crossovers. So there are some platforms where you're going in and you're loading this information. You're making these choices and you keep niching down category, subcategory, subcategory, subcategory. You might be able to choose three of a sub sub subcategory, all of which could pertain to your book, then choose them. By all means, max out however many choices it'll let you have. It's just that many more categories you'll appear in, as long as there's some sort of relevance there.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Don't go in and choose the most random abstract sub category of a sub category of a sub category, because you think you'll get best seller status. That's how everybody has gamed the system on the āzon for the last eight years, eight to ten years. And everybody's hip to that now. So just don't bother. Everybody knows if you want to call yourself a best seller, find a more genuine, sincere, and real way to do it.
Lauren: Yeah, and on that note also don't lie. If you see an underpopulated subgenre that you think like oh, I can, I can stretch and say that my book is a part of this subgenre so that it shows up in search results for that and your book is notā¦ enjoy your reviews.
Matt: Like teenage vampire finance romance. Don't put your uh, don't put your cozy Amish romance book in that category just to, to game the system and potentially get best seller status.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, I don't think it'll work for you.
Matt: It might, but don't do it.
Lauren: No, or you're gonna, you know, is it really worth it for you if you hit best seller status and all your reviews are one and two star reviews? I mean, I guess, I guess, congratulations, you made money.
Matt: I mean, nobody trusts the Amazon reviews anyway. Oh, I said the A word.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Nobody trusts those reviews anyways, but yeah, you definitely don't want those for sure.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Just be straightforward.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I think you should be marketing to human beings and not to algorithms. Right?
Lauren: Valid.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Absolutely. Keep in mind as you're doing this, that crossover when relevant is okay, though. I know we already said that. Just make sure that that's - that you're understanding that. Because it is. I mean, think about how you would search for something. Let's say I'm going, looking for a new book to read and I am searching for hockey romance. And you wrote a hockey romance, but you categorized it as a sports romance and not a hockey romance. I might never find your book if you didn't categorize it.
Matt: If you didn't niche down to hockey from sports.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Right. But if you have it as a sports romance and a hockey romanceā¦
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I'll find it.
Matt: You'll find it faster.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: That's the point.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Yeah. So to be clear, we're talking about how to get people to your book faster and to cut through the white noise of all the other titles.
Lauren: Yeah. Because you're competing with every other title that's in that category.
Matt: That's right.
Lauren: So you want to make sure that you have that clear and available.
Matt: Well, and that's also why we say the riches are in the niches. If you wrote a hockey romance, you don't want to be up here with all the sports romance books, you want to be niched down into hockey romance
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Where you're competing against a lot less authors and books, right? So.
Lauren: And the audiences are different. And I know that's crazy. This is a crazy example. If you're listening to this and you're like, Lauren, what's the difference? Who cares? You're still finding it. No, cause you know what? I don't want to read about football romances, but I do want to read about hockey romance. So there is a difference. I'm just saying.
Matt: Yeah, no, you're right.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I mean, a hundred percent right.
Lauren: If you, if you have a target audience in mind, your target audience knows who they are and you have to make sure that you are aiming your book right at them.
Matt: Yeah, for sure.
Lauren: Yeah.
[17:08]
Matt: Are bookstore category is the same as BISAC categories?
Lauren: No. Well, yes and no. Thereās a lot of
Matt: Probably depends on which bookstore you're in.
Lauren: Yes, it does. There's a lot of overlap between them. And we did, that is actually something that we worked on here at Lulu when we were updating our bookstore categories was mapping them to -
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - BISAC categories. But your BISAC codes are really important. And I feel like this is something that people tend to skip over a lot because they don't understand what it is. And I would highly encourage you to not do that. The BISAC codes, it's the Book Industry Standards And Communication codes. Areā¦ youāre welcome.
Matt: What was that voice?
Lauren: Um, scholarly nerd.
Matt: How rude.
Lauren: BISAC codes are a globally accepted standardized system for categorizing books, so.
Matt: It's one of the only things we've managed to standardize globally.
Lauren: Yes. Yes.
Matt: We couldn't get imperial or metrics sorted out, but we, we did globalize -
Lauren: We, we got this one.
Matt: - and standardized BISAC.
Lauren: We got this one and it is actually -
Matt: Cool.
Lauren: - it's a pretty solid database. They update it annually and so they're constantly adding new categories to it. I was just reading the other day that they added, oh man, I was reading, it was in Joanna Penn's bi-weekly newsletter. They're adding.
Matt: Hockey romance?
Lauren: No, that's already in there I think.
Matt: Hockey romance is not a BISAC code.
Lauren: No, I think sports romance is.
Matt: Of course it is.
Lauren: No, they're adding, it's a cozy, it's a cozy category, but I can't think of what it is off the top of my head. But like they added Romantasy a couple of years ago.
Matt: Cozy construction?
Lauren: Like they add categories - yeah, yeah. Yes. Cozy construction romance. Perfect. But it is, it's a categorization system that is very similar to the bookstore categories, but it's been standardized and it gets very specific. Very specific. So it starts high level with - at this point in time, there are 54 categories or what they call subject headers. And then those niche down into subcategories. So like one of the subject headers is fiction. There are 393 subjects under that fiction category. 70 of them are romance and 10 of them are horror.
Matt: Boo.
Lauren: I know, I had to check, but like that's like 70 romance categories.
Matt: I'm gonna write cozy horror romance.
Lauren: That sounds great, I'd read it.
Matt: It does.
Lauren: Yeah. Sounds great. But that is something that's really, really helpful to you because it is a globally standardized system. That is the surefire way to make sure that your book gets categorized correctly, whether it's in a bookstore, in an online database, on an ecommerce site, anything like that.
Matt: Especially, especially if you are concerned about scaling globally.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So if you're only concerned about selling in the US fine, don't take it very seriously, but if you definitely want to make sure your books get read outside of the US and maybe even potentially translated and read in other countries where English is not the common language spoken and read. And you might even want to go so far as to start looking at foreign rights and things for your books. You really need to make sure that these BISAC codes are correct.
Lauren: And to be clear, you can apply multiple of them to your book. I'm not sure what the maximum is.
On Lulu it's three and I would you are only required to apply one, but you can apply up to three. I would highly encourage you to use all three of those. I'm not sure if that's a standard max on them, but I do have the complete list linked in the show notes and also a blog post that goes over more specifically what they are and how to use them and how to apply them. If you have questions about that, definitely go check that out.
Matt: Yeah.
[20:43]
Lauren: And then the last little thing that I wanted to talk about with this was comp titles actually, which I know we've talked about in the past. Comp titles are not gonna be in your metadata. That's not something that you're gonna include anywhere in your metadata unless you're using them in your book description, which is something that we talk about in that episode.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But what they are really useful for is how to do your research to understand what your metadata should be for your book. So if you're not really sure where to start with that, when it comes to things like your BISAC code or your genres or whatever, go look at the books that you've identified as your comp titles and see what they're doing. And you can see that information. It varies a little bit by retailers. So I was looking to see like what, what information I could find on different, on different sites. Bookshop.org does show the BISAC codes -
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - for books in their metadata on the book pages. And then for the bookstore categories and genres, I found them on like, publisher websites on Amazon and on Goodreads. So you can find that information for the titles that you have on your comp titles list, assuming that that author has provided that metadata as well. But you can find that publicly. You don't need to have access to any kind of like, special database to find that information.
Matt: So, there are tools out there that you can use to do a lot of this.
Lauren: Yeah?
Matt: Some really good tools. And at the risk of throwing the rest of this episode into chaos.
Lauren: Please do.
Matt: Now that we're at the comp title part, if you're using a tool likeā¦ so there's Publisher Rocket and Bublish also has some really cool AI driven author tools. So they have their, their AI Toolkit on Bublish. Both of these tools basically will help you do keyword research, category research, develop better descriptions and metadata. They're both designed to help you better position your book for sales, especially as it pertains to third party retailers like the Zon or some of those others.
Publisher Rocket is focused solely on Amazon. So everything you're going to get from that tool is specific, but I've heard really good things about it. And again, it really helps you sort of understand what keywords you should use. Having comp titles helps the tool understand where you're trying to be.
And then Bublish, their AI toolkit. They have a really cool one that will literally help you with the use of AI, craft better descriptions and keyword lists. It will also generate comp titles for you. So you can better understand where your book might be better positioned based on, you know, the input that you gave the tool.
So there's some really good tools out there and probably more than those two, but those are the two that I know of and that I know people are having a lot of good success with. Those tools will help you do probably most of what we're talking about. And it is really important. Like we said, if you've not generated metadata for your book before - or books, plural - having a tool like this or access to a tool like this is extremely helpful and really puts you ahead of the curve when it comes to discoverability. So I would encourage you to check out one or both of these tools.
They're priced differently. Like I said, some of them have different features and Publisher Rocket is focused only on Amazon. But nonetheless, as with most things these days, you don't have to go at it alone. You can almost always find a tool out there that'll help you do what you're trying to do. And metadata is no different. So yeah, I would, I would encourage you to, to check these tools out as well if you're struggling a little bit with how to generate some really good description and keywords and some of those other things, which categories you should choose based on which audiences you're trying to hit with the most.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. We've talked about the Bublish Author Toolkit before.
Matt: We have.
Lauren: It's a very cool tool and this is a great opportunity for you to use it in the way that it was really designed to be used. So for sure, I will link both of those in the show notes if you want to check them out.
Matt: Yeah.
[24:32]
Lauren: You ready?
Matt: I thought I was done. I just gave them -
Lauren: Done?
Matt: - two tools to do all this stuff.
Lauren: But there are so many more tools that you could recommend.
Matt: Youāre right, youāre right, youāre right. Okay.
Lauren: All right.
Matt: So we want to talk about keywords now?
Lauren: Yeah. Because your keyword research is a great way for you to fit additional discoverability into your book -
Matt: Yup.
Lauren: - without specifically using your BISAC codes and your categories and stuff like that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Although they can influence each other. I debated for a while which order to put these two things in because I really couldn't decide whether it was more useful to do your keyword research first and use that to decide what your genres and BISAC categories were. Or to have the high level understanding of what your genres and BISAC categories were and then use that as you were conducting keyword research.
Matt: Yeah, I guess technically you're right, you could do it both ways. In my opinion, I think the latter is probably a little more prudent because that denotes you understand who your audiences are at a high level. The keywords are really about, you know again, niching down and driving more of a very particular specific audience. You know, so again, my BISAC category might just be horror.
If I'm lucky, there's another BISAC category of, I don't know, something to do with that, like thriller or paranormal, right? Or supernatural or something like that. But then where I can get really crafty is in my keyword choices. And so if I'm really targeting people who are fans of puppet horror, right? Like if you were a fan of Chucky and some of those others where it's a puppet that's generating the chaos and the horror, I'm going to use keywords that are specific to that. And I'm going to use comp titles like Chucky and some of those others.
So I think keywords are really one of the best ways to be able to niche down and drive very specific audiences in traffic. And so to me, I feel like I would want to go in knowing my audiences and BISAC codes first and then using keywords to support that. Whereas when you, when you do the opposite, you could potentially take the description of your book, dump that into a tool and it gives you a bunch of keywords. But I still think you're gonna struggle to take all those keywords and turn those into BISAC choices. It's a lot easier to go from high level to sub level than to go from sub level back up to high level.
Lauren: Well, and also you would wanna take some of these keywords and include them in your book description.
Matt: Potentially, for sure.
Lauren: So, yeah.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah, you're right. That was a great example actually, because there is not a BISAC category for clown horror - or not clown horror.
Matt: No, no, no.
Lauren: You said puppet horror.
Matt: Yeah, I don't mess with clowns.
Lauren: You said puppet horror.
Matt: Puppet.
Lauren: That is not a horror BISAC category. And I'm not sure which one of these categories I would put puppet horror in. But if you had that in the keywordsā¦
Matt: That's right.
Lauren: Then you're covering your bases.
Matt: That's right. Yeah. Now, some people end up having to lump it into paranormal or supernatural. But there are enough horror books out there with puppets as the main character that there should be a category. There's not. So keywords are where you really will drive people who are looking for that kind of horror.
Lauren: Would you call Chucky an eldritch horror, a monster and creature horror, or an occult and supernatural horror?
Matt: Well, again, with just those three choices, I would go with monster or creature because I don't know that the other two are as accurate, but that's just me.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Which also you can, if you're listening to that and you're like, oh, I don't know where I would put Chucky in that either. How am I supposed to know which, which category I'm supposed to choose for my book? They have very thorough explanations of all these things on the BISAC website. I canāt think of the name of the company.
Matt: And these tools that we talked about -
Lauren: Yes. Yes, and these tools.
Matt: - they are already pretty good at ferreting out which category you should be in.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Or multiples if it applies.
Lauren: Yes. And also keep your puppet horror far, far away from me. Thank you very much.
Matt: Not a fan, huh?
Lauren: No.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Not really a fan of horror in general.
Matt: Okay. Fair enough.
Lauren: Yeah, there was a there was a Chucky house at Halloween Horror Nights the year that I went and I didn't even pretend that I was gonna go in it. That's like, hmm. No. Yāall have fun.
Matt: No, so that's not your thing?
Lauren: No. No, no, no, definitely not. No.
Matt: There was um, one of my favorite books by Grady Hendrix It's called How to Sell a Haunted House.
Lauren: I haven't read that one.
Matt: It's really good, but it's it's got a - the puppet is the main - yeah, or doll puppet. Actually, no, it's a puppet. It's a doll puppet, but it's a great book. I mean, Grady Hendrix's books are a different kind of horror. So it's not like, I don't know if you'll lose sleep at night.
Lauren: I really liked My Best Friend's Exorcism.
Matt: Well, did you watch the movie or read the book?
Lauren: No, I read the book.
Matt: Perfect. The movie is terrible.
Lauren: I read the book and I - I DNF'd the Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, but not because I didn't like it. It just wasn't the vibe at the time. So I do want to go back and reread that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I want to give that another shot at some point because I was enjoying it. It just wasn't what I felt like reading. I think it was during the pandemic and I was feeling very like - it was like spring of 2020. And I was like, this is too, this is too serious for me right now. I need nothing but fluff in this moment.
Matt: Yeah, I get it.
Lauren: But yeah, I have actually read a couple of Grady Hendrix. God, you said something else in there that I wanted to go off with. And I can't think of what it was.
Matt: I don't know.
Lauren: Oh, well, it's gone forever. It'll come to me when I'm editing this episode and I'll go oh yeah, that was, that was a really insightful point that I could have made.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: If only my brain remembered more than thirty seconds back at any given time. Yeah.
Matt: Alright, well. I still, I still maintain it's probably easier to sort of ascertain, develop your BISAC codes, your upper level categories and description, and then worry about keywords to drive more relevant and niche down traffic, so.
Lauren: I agree, clearly, as that's the order that I decided to lay this outline out in. So that was ultimately what I decided too, but I agree. I think that's the right order to be doing this. Because you really do need to make sure that you have a full understanding of your target audience before you start getting granular with stuff like keywords.
Matt: Yeah, it's also important though not to go overboard. So you did note in here that there's some other keyword research tools that you can use and there are, there absolutely are, there's a lot of good ones. You noted some really good ones. SparkToro. Obviously Google has their own keyword planner. There are tons of other tools, right? You can use ChatGPT. If you've got the money or you already have access to something like Moz or SEMrush, you know what I mean?
But I would caution you to goā¦ not to go overboard with keywords, right? And try to use tools or prompts that are very specific to your genre and who you're trying to get as readers. If you go too crazy with the keywords, you can actually probably work against yourself. So.
Lauren: You know what works really well for keywords? Knowing your genre tropes.
Matt: You're lucky I don't feel like getting out of this chair right now. I just, I could just go back to my desk and snack on some cookies.
Lauren: Oh yeah. It is lunchtime. Youāve been very patient for it being lunchtime. Thanks. I appreciate it. Yes, yeah, yes. The point is that there are all these tools available that you could use, but for sure do not go overboard with your keyword researching and know what, know what is appropriate for your audience and what isn't.
Matt: Yeah. And if no other reason, I can tell you from experience, as a keyword nerd, as a search nerd, it gets overwhelming very quickly. And if you're simply just trying to create better metadata for your book, you don't need a list of 600 keywords. Like that's just not - but some of these tools will literally spit that out in a minute for you and you don't need all of that. So again, try not to overdo it, but also understand right now we're in a kind of a tipping point, if you will, where the traditional methods of search, you know, going to something like Google, typing in the search bar, and then getting a bunch of search results, line items, that's quickly disappearing and what you're, what you're going to get more and more that you're already getting is some AI generated blurb that is technically pulled from search results at times.
But at other times, you're not sure where that information is coming from, so. Understanding that to prepare yourself for a future where search looks different than it does now being as concise and specific with your keywords is going to be more important than ever. Gone are the days where you can throw 600 keywords and stuff them into a, you know, a 1500 word blog article and hit for everything. Like you're going to really need to be very specific about things.
Lauren: Yeah. Is there like a sweet spot you think for a list of keywords that would be good to have?
Matt: I have no idea. I don't think so because you know, some of the platforms are going to be posting on, they may only allow you to use up to five keywords, right? Some of them will restrict the amount you can use. Others might be less restrictive or non-restrictive. If you're playing the Google game directly and you're developing a keyword list for Google, let's say you're going to run some paid search ads or something.
You're not necessarily limited, but, um, there are ways that you would want to craft the specific sort of ad groups for that particular book using the keywords appropriately. You group them. So, but that gets down a whole nother world. So. A number of keywords it's just going to depend on platforms. But I would take the least common denominator probably. And if you could - maybe five to ten solid keyword sets that really describe your work and that the audiences that you're really trying to target would be using, I wouldn't do any more than that.
Lauren: Cool.
Matt: It's overkill.
Lauren: Yeah, there's also, you made a really good point in there that I want to make sure that we're -
Matt: I did?
Lauren: Yeah. You're doing great today.
Matt: Hell yeah.
Lauren: I want to make sure that we're not skating over. And that is the idea that these keywords are relevant for you beyond just the setting up and publishing of your book. This isn't stuff that's just gonna go in your metadata and then you don't have to think about it ever again. Your keywords will be useful for you when you're doing things like creating ads. If you're doing any kind of ads, whether it's social media ads, Google ads, a BookBub ad, something like that, you're gonna wanna reference this list of keywords. If you're doing something like writing holiday copy and you know, you're creating a couple of posts that you want to be promoting your book around the holidays -
Matt: Yeah.
Laruen: - and you're looking for the exact right keywords that shoppers are going to be searching, even targeted algorithmic social media content, you know?
Matt: Well, or even earned media. So if you -
Lauren: That too.
Matt: - listen back or think back to some of the other episodes we've done around earned media, let's say somebody's creating an article about the ten best books to give horror readers in your life, and they're doing keyword searches to find these books, that's where again, it's super important that you're being positioned appropriately to get some of that earned free media coverage. Somebody's writing a best of article or something like that. So this ties back to all methods of potential marketing and or advertising, making sure you get these right out of the gate.
Lauren: Yeah. Making sure you get these right out of the gate, but also recognizing that your keyword list can be fluid over time.
Matt: Sure, yeah.
Lauren: That's something to keep in mind. That's also something that we haven't really talked about with the metadata. Your metadata is locked into your ISBN when you publish your book. So a lot of this stuff that we're talking about when it comes to like your BISAC categories and your your title and your author name and edition publication data, all that stuff that is not editable, that you have to you have to really do your research ahead of time, know exactly what you're putting in your metadata.
Because once you publish that book, that information cannot be changed, you are committed to that being associated with that title. That is something that you have to keep in mind while you're doing your metadata prep. But your keyword list isā¦ is reference for yourself. That's something that you're putting together as a, as a reference guide for you. So that is something that can be fluid over time, that can change over time. Cause you know, we live in a world where not even that things change constantly, but there are constantly evolving new categories for things.
Matt: That's right.
Lauren: I've been really into on TikTok lately, the idea of dopamine decor, which I guarantee you is not a phrase that existed in the English language -
Matt: What is that?
Lauren: - more than three years ago. It's like really bright, colorful maximalist design so that it's like really, like basically like, I wanna be surrounded by things that just looking at them gives me a shot of dopamine.
Matt: So basically like living in Andy Warhol's warehouse.
Lauren: Sure, yeah, or living in Barbie's dream house.
Matt: Oh my God.
Lauren: Which yes, it does go directly diametrically opposed to all of the skulls and skeletons and black and gold that I have in my apartment. It's been an interesting decor shift, but it is like that's -
Matt: Wow.
Lauren: - that is a phrase that if I was doing keyword research for a coffee table book on home decor five years ago, dopamine decor probably did not exist within that keyword phrase.
Matt: Iām certain it didnāt.
Lauren: But now it does. So that is something that you want to kind of update over time and make sure that you're staying on top of trends over time, because that is also something that as that becomes a niche in that industry, if it's new, that's a content opportunity for you to kind of get in there when it's still new and be like, hey, yeah, no, I, I got stuff that fits into this category. Come check it out over here.
Matt: That's, that's a crazy sounding niche, but okay.
Lauren: It's great. It's so fun. My apartment looks like it's just - has split personality disorder.
Matt: Your apartment looks like TikTok threw up in it.
Lauren: Not yet. We're not there yet. But there's a sharp contrast -
Matt: That reminds me.
Lauren: - between all the pink and disco balls in one room and then all the black and skulls in the other room.
Matt: Yeah. Have you seen the trailer for the new season of Wednesday?
Lauren: No?
Matt: Itās out.
Lauren: I was too busy watching Lady Gaga's surprise music video during the Grammys last night.
Matt: That was supposed to be a MasterCard commercial, by the way.
Lauren: It was a MasterCard commercial.
Matt: It's disgusting is what it was.
Lauren: Oh, my God. Don't. Don't you talk about Mother Monster like that.
Matt: Next.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: I don't even want to get started on that because the only reason I was even watching that stupid show.
Lauren: Yeah, why were you watching the Grammys?
Matt: Because my favorite band was nominated and then lost and I was very upset by this.
Lauren: For what category?
Matt: Metal. Yeah. Knocked Loose was nominated with Poppy and Gojira won because they played the Olympic opening ceremony which was great.
Lauren: I mean, it was a really cool performance.
Matt: They deserved to win too but I mean. Yeah.
Lauren: It's okay. My girl didn't win anything either.
Matt: I was very surprised by that.
Lauren: I know, I'm actually really disappointed by it.
Matt: The whole thing sucked, by the way.
Lauren: Well, I thought Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan put on really good performances, but other than that it was all kind of... And I'm very happy for Beyonce.
Matt: You also like dopamine decor, so everybody listening, take that with a grain of salt.
Lauren: I would argue both of those performances were very dopamine heavy.
Matt: I would argue most people have no idea what you're talking about.
Lauren: Thatās alright. That's okay. This episode also comes out... Well, actually, no, this episode comes out next week, we're fine. I was going to say it comes out well past the Grammys. But yeah, we're fine.
[39:03]
Lauren: Anyway, back to keywords, because I do want to make sure we actually get this part in here. Where to actually use your keywords in your book metadata. If you're writing nonfiction, it's great to include one or two keywords -
Matt: Thatās right.
Lauren: - in your title or subtitle.
Matt: Don't stuff.
Lauren: Do not stuff. Your subtitle should not be twelve words and eleven of them are keywords and one of them is the. Like that's...
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: Please don't do that. But if you have two, one or two really high level keywords that would be good to include in your title and subtitle. Fair. Like we already said, your book description is a great place. And again, do not stuff it full. You want your book description to be articulate and actually make sense to readers. You don't want it to be just a junk up, like a junked up bunch of jargon.
Matt: You don't want it to look like an AI generated -
Lauren: Right.
Matt - book description -
Lauren: Right.
Matt: - which is typically keyword stuffed and sounds like a robot wrote it.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But if you have an organic opportunity to make sure you include some keywords in your book description, that's helpful.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. And then obviously like we kind of talked about in the beginning, when you're choosing your, your bookstore categories, your BISAC, you know, that kind of goes hand in hand. Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And then don't forget, they're also relevant for places like the copy on your website. We don't need to get into the whole conversation about how to make your website discoverable.
Matt: There's an episode for that.
Lauren: There is. And things like your social media bios and your social media copy and your about the author and all kinds of stuff. Like there's places to include that that aren't just your book, but it's also good to have it all kind of streamlined. Like you want to make sure you're using the keywords in as many places as possible and the same ones.
Matt: Love it.
Lauren: You know, yeah.
Lauren: What about what not to do? There's always a couple of things to not do.
Matt: What not to do?
Lauren: Mmhmm.
Matt: I would not pronounce niche as niche.
Lauren: Well, we knew that already.
Matt: That's what I would not do.
Lauren: I'm going to catch you in it one day.
Matt: You mean beyond that?
Lauren: It's going to infiltrate your brain.
Matt: What are some things you should not do?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Well, we touched on a few, but maybe it's important to retouch on them again. Again, I wouldn't rush through this. I would take it seriously, regardless of where you think you're going to be selling or giving away your book or whatever you're doing with it, metadata can be really helpful and you might not think you need it now, but when you might need it in the future. It'd be a lot easier if you'd already taken care of these things and taken it seriously. So be thorough, double check your work. If you can afford it or if you have access to it, use a tool to help you. We mentioned a few, there'll be things linked in the show notes, but there's some great tools that can help you do all this to really make sure you get ahead of the game.
As Lauren mentioned, you know, for the ISBN itself, if you're getting an ISBN, once you put the major data points in for your ISBN application, that's it. You can't edit it. If you want to change something youāre pretty much just comes to get a new ISBN number. Nobody wants to do that. So we also mentioned don't kind of lie or misrepresent your book to try and game the system to get best seller status and some obscure subcategory of a subcategory. It does nobody any good.
Best seller status, especially from the āzon, is really not worth all that. And the potential bad reviews you might get or upset customers. So, you know, those are two things for sure that I would make sure I focused on. What about you?
Lauren: In line with the, with the original point you know, making sure that you're associating the correct metadata with your ISBN.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: If you are republishing a new edition of your book, whether it's because you're updating it or you're publishing a like, repackaged edition, if you're if you're doing something where you're adding a new ISBN to a new edition of the book, that is your opportunity to consider updating your metadata. So definitely don't just mindlessly like, carry over your metadata from from one edition to the other.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Especially if you include edition specific details.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Like if you're if you have the metadata in one book that says this book is large print make sure that you don't accidentally carry that over to another edition of the book.
Matt: Yeah copy and pasting can sometimes lead to some inadvertent mistakes that could hurt you down the road so make sure you're again being thorough if you're doing some of that.
Lauren: Yes. And then the other thing I really just want to reiterate when it comes to what not to do. Do not be vague with the things that you choose.
Matt: For keywords.
Lauren: Yes, for keywords, for BISAC codes, for your bookstore. Like I said earlier, there's the high level fiction -
Matt: Right.
Lauren: - category, and then there are 393 subcategories within fiction. Choosing just that high level fiction BISAC code for your book and not applying any other ones to it is not gonna help you. You're being too vague. That's not gonna help you make your book more discoverable. So niche down as much as you can. Do not keep it high level. Do not keep it vague. Get as specific as you can when relevant.
Matt: That's right. You don't want to compete in sports romance. You want to compete in hockey romance.
Lauren: Exactly.
Matt: Or baseball romance.
Lauren: Yeah, I'm also here for baseball romance.
Matt: Or Formula One romance.
Lauren: That is - I've not read any of those yet, but I've heard it's a very popular sub genre.
Matt: It is.
Lauren: If anyone has any recommendations, let me know. I'm willing to give it a try. I don't know anything about Formula One, but I hear it's very popular. Oh man.
Matt: We almost made it.
Lauren: We almost made it.
Matt: Almost.
Lauren: We almost made it. We've officially hit overheating mode.
Matt: Camera overheated.
Lauren: Well.
Matt: Hopefully you got some value out of this. You can hit the like button, subscribe, follow us, do whatever you gotta do. Maybe even leave us a review. That'd be cool.
Lauren: That would be cool.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Otherwise, I guess we'll see you next week.
Lauren: Weāll see you then. Thanks for listening.
Matt: Later.