Awesome presentation on creating great metadata by Sourcebooks' Editorial Manager Peter Lynch

1. Metadata for
Editorial and Sales Impact
Metadata Perspectives Conference
Peter Lynch, Editorial
Manager, Trade, Sourcebooks, USA

2. Leading Discovery
• The most important driver of editorial and sales
impact is discovery
• The publishing departments most often charged with
driving discovery are:
• Editorial
• Sales
• Marketing
• Publicity

3. Leading Discovery
• What are the lead forces of discovery?
• Before: Bookstore table placements,
Advertisements, Newspaper reviews, etc.
• Today: Metadata
• Yet the departments most often charged with
maintaining metadata are Production and IT

4. Creating a Metadata Culture
• If metadata is the most important factor in discovery,
ALL departments must contribute to, take ownership
of, and champion metadata
• Editorial
• Production
• Sales
• Publicity/Marketing
• EVERYONE

5. Creating a Metadata Culture
We must create and support a
company culture centered on
metadata

6. Now does this mean?

7. Creating a Metadata Culture
• It means: Capturing metadata in ways that are easy,
even transparent, for all departments
• They may not even know they’re entering
metadata!
• It means: Communicating the importance of
metadata on the front and back end
• Requiring metadata to launch titles
• Celebrating the results of successful metadata

8. Capturing Metadata
• Create and push a central database for all title
information
• Merge all departments’ information and tracking in
linked databases

10. Capturing Metadata
• Main categories
• Key title specs and information
• Descriptive information
• Production and manufacturing specs
• Sales, PR, and Marketing information
• Onix/Web feeds
• Linked to all company databases

13. Capturing Metadata
• Main categories
• Key title specs and information
• Descriptive information
• Production and manufacturing specs
• Sales, PR, and Marketing information
• Onix/Web feeds

14. Key title specs and information

15. Key title specs and information
• Key title specs
• Rights information
• Parent/child information (ebooks, etc.)
• Comp titles and author’s previous titles

16. Descriptive information

17. Descriptive information
• Short and long descriptions
• Frontmatter
• Excerpts
• Author bios
• Catalog copy and information
• Launch copy and information

18. Production and Manufacturing specs

19. Production and Manufacturing specs
• Manufacturing specs
• Production schedule
• Print runs
• Change log
• ARC info

20. Sales, PR, and Marketing information

21. Production and Manufacturing specs
• Forecasts
• Sales materials needed
• Marketing/PR plans
• PR highlights (reviews and PR appearances)
• POS

22. Onix/Web feeds

23. Onix/Web feeds
• Onix feeds
• Company website information and uploads

24. Creating a Metadata Culture
• ALL departments must contribute to, take ownership
of, and champion metadata
• Editorial
• Production
• Sales
• Publicity/Marketing
• EVERYONE

25. Editorial
• All key title data entered at launch
• ISBN • Imprint
• Binding • Category
• Title/subtitle • BISACs
• Authors • Parent/child ISBNs
• Trim size • Age/grade info
• Pub month • Paper stock recs
• Copyright year • Internal colors

26. Editorial
• All rights info entered at launch
• Territories
• Subsidiary rights
• Translation restrictions

27. • All rights info entered at launch

28. Editorial
• Key Sales/Marketing info entered at launch
• Positioning statement • Reviews/blurbs
• Description • Author bios
• Sales/marketing • Author region
handles
• Target audiences

29. • All rights info entered at launch

30. Production
• Production and Manufacturing specs maintained
• Cover treatments
• Internal treatments
• Case quantities
• CPSIA info
• Change log

31. • All rights info entered at launch

32. Production
• Book and ARC schedules maintained
• Book schedule tracking
• ARC tracking

33. • All rights info entered at launch

34. Sales
• Sales materials listed and maintained
• Sales materials requests
• Sales materials tracking

36. Sales
• Sales information maintained
• Forecasts
• Sell-in
• Co-op
• POS

38. PR/Marketing
• Catalog information entered and exported
• Catalog copy
• Key selling points
• Marketing bullets
• Blurbs
• Rights info

40. PR/Marketing
• PR and Marketing plans/hits maintained
• Publicity plans
• Marketing plans
• Reviews
• Media highlights

42. Metadata for impact
• Altogether, hundreds to 1,000+ data fields
maintained throughout the process
• So why the effort?
• Must consider the important sales impacts resulting
from the metadata

43. Metadata for impact – Key factors
• Avoiding mistakes
• Categorization and tags
• Blurbs and reviews
• Sales presentation efficiencies
• SEO-savvy descriptions
• Online retailer page presentations

44. Avoiding Mistakes
• The “One-and-Done” principle
• The first Onix feed is the most important
• Other sources feed off the sources you feed
directly
• Thus, changing or updating titles, covers,
etc. after the initial feed can prove to be a
nightmare

45. Avoiding Mistakes
Case study: The Secret Book

46. Categorization and Tags
• BISAC selection
• Bookstore buyer placement
• Library searches
• Variety of BISACs
• Tags
• Tagging for subgenre lists
• Tagging for SEO

47. Blurbs and reviews
• Early blurb entry
• Blurbs for current or previous books can and will
populate to online retailers and retail databases
• Blurb/review databasing
• Automatically export new reviews
• New editions
• Properly entered reviews and blurbs easily linked
to future editions

48. Sales presentation efficiencies
• Automatically and consistently import and
populate retailer title feeds
• Sales materials requests generated post-
launch
• Feed PR and Marketing updates to accounts as
new hits develop

49. SEO-savvy descriptions
• Short and long descriptions provided, per
needs of different accounts
• SEO Best Practices supplied to Editorial from
which to craft descriptive copy

50. Online retailer page presentations
• Strong metadata entry and maintenance =
strong sales pages at online retailers
• Strong sales pages push purchases
• Rate of purchase influences discovery via
“also buy” recommendations and bestseller
list placement

59. Metadata for Editorial and Sales
Impact
• Create a Metadata culture
• Avoid mistakes
• Optimize categorization and tags
• Utilize blurbs and reviews
• Use sales presentation efficiencies
• Create SEO-savvy descriptions
• Perfect online retailer page presentations

60. Questions?