Metadata is the data that describes your book — title, description, keywords, categories. It's the single biggest lever for discoverability on every retailer.
Title
- Exact title: match your cover exactly, including capitalization. "The Marriage Trade" not "the marriage trade".
- No retailer mentions: don't put "(Kindle Edition)" or "Best Seller" in the title — retailers strip those.
- Series naming: if it's part of a series, put the title alone in the Title field, and use the Series Name + Number fields. Don't put "Book 2 of XYZ" in the title.
Description
This is the marketing copy that appears on every retailer page. Use at least 50 text characters and stay within 4,000 UTF-8 bytes; roughly 800–1,500 plain-text characters is usually a useful target.
- Opening hook: the first 2 lines are what readers see in search results. Make them irresistible.
- Specifics over generalities: "set in 1980s Lagos during the SAP riots" beats "set in a turbulent African city".
- Genre cues: mention recognisable comp titles ("for fans of Akwaeke Emezi and Bernardine Evaristo").
- Avoid spoilers: describe the setup, not the ending.
- HTML allowed: <p> for paragraphs, <b> for emphasis, <i> for italics. Most retailers strip everything else.
Keywords
You get up to 7 keyword slots. These are how retailer search engines find your book.
- Be specific. "African historical fiction" beats "fiction".
- Use phrases, not single words. "queer Nigerian love story" beats "queer".
- Don't repeat words from your title — that's wasted.
- No competitor names. Amazon will reject "fans of Akwaeke Emezi" — they don't allow author names in keywords.
- Don't keyword-stuff in your description. It hurts more than it helps.
Categories
You can pick up to three BISAC subject headings. Choose the most specific ones — "African Romance" > "Romance > Multicultural" > "Romance".
For each retailer, more specific categories rank you in smaller, less competitive lists. A book in "Fiction > African" is competing with 500 others; a book in "Fiction > Africa > Nigeria > Contemporary" competes with 30.
Language
Pick the primary language. If your book uses Pidgin or has substantial Yoruba/Hausa/Igbo passages, still mark it as English with those passages — that's how readers will search for it.
Publication date
For new releases: pick a Tuesday or Thursday. Mondays are the day NYT bestsellers list updates, so launching then puts you in front of attentive readers.
For backlist: pick the original publication date. Retailers use this for "newest first" sort order, so older books in the New Releases list look out of place.