Mastering the Mysteries of Metadata
Okay, hotshot, so you want to be an e-book publisher? Piece of cake. All you have to do is provide your retailers with the following information about your books:- eISBN
- Title
- Contributors
- Description
- Publisher
- Language
- Territorial Rights with Country Code
- Suggested Retail Price with country code
- Publication Date
- BISAC Code
Take the simple matter of book titles. What is your retailer's protocol for designating them? Do they prefer "The Grapes of Wrath" Or "Grapes of Wrath, The"? And how about the byline? "John Steinbeck"? Or "Steinbeck, John"?
Or take suggested retail price. Which currency are we talking about? US dollars? Canadian dollars? Australian dollars? British Pounds? And do you know the Country Code associated with the currency?
Then there's the matter of territorial rights. There's a code for every country in which you have the right to sell your books. Do you know the country code for Lesotho? Cameroon? Mozambique? How about the USA? Canada?
You'll need a 13-digit eISBN for each and every e-book. Do you have them? Know where to get them? Are they free or do you have to buy them?
And of course you'll need BISAC codes, the numbered subject headings organized to help retailers display books by topic. Are you publishing a fantasy? What kind of fantasy? Contemporary (FIC009010)? Historical (FIC009030)? Paranormal (FIC009050)? (You can read all about BISAC Codes here.)
What about your covers? What's the retailer's convention for image files, .png or .jpg? What's the minimum pixels per square inch? Minimum width in pixels?
There's lots more -- pages and pages of definitions, specs and tolerances in fine print provided by each retailer.
Still think any bozo can become an e-publisher? Do your Metadata homework and get back to me.
Richard Curtis
Labels: e-books, Metadata, Publishing in the Twenty-first Century, Retailing, Richard Curtis
