in Publishing
Metadata is not marketing
Categories, keywords and the description do a duller job than a campaign, and they do it every day for years.
Authors publishing for the first time tend to think about a launch: the week the book comes out, the posts, the push. Very few think about metadata, which is a shame, because metadata is what sells books in the other fifty-one weeks.
What it actually is
The title and subtitle, the categories the book sits in, the keywords attached to it, the description on the store page, the author biography, the series name if there is one. It is the material a retailer uses to decide which shelf your book belongs on and which searches it answers.
Categories are a shelf, not a label
Choosing a category is choosing your competition and your reader in one move. A broad category puts a first novel beside a hundred thousand others; a precise one puts it in front of the people who read exactly that. The instinct to be in the biggest possible category is usually the wrong one.
The description is a jacket, not a summary
A store description has one job: make the next click feel obvious. It opens with the situation, not with the weather; it names the stakes; it stops before the ending. It is also the only piece of copy on the page that you control completely.
It is maintenance, not a one-off
Metadata should be revisited. Categories change, search behaviour changes, the book finds readers you did not expect. Reading the numbers every few months and adjusting is unglamorous work, and it compounds.
This is the least romantic part of publishing a book and one of the highest returns on an afternoon.