One of the best ways to enhance and increase your sales is to ensure you are providing the best quality metadata (Metadata = the data that provides information about data, the main purpose of which is to facilitate in the discovery of relevant information) The more accurate and consistent your metadata is, the more enhanced your discover-ability options become.
Series Metadata
Kobo Writing Life has always had a “Series Name” field, and also allows authors the ability to enter the series number (AKA Volume Number) associated with any books they have written that are part of a series.
Based on the analysis of patterns of reading behavior, Kobo is in the process of optimizing sales for books in a series with the desired effect of helping customers read more of the books they love in a series they love while helping publishers and authors to continue to grow their sales of those books.
This optimization is based on the raw data that is provided to us by publishers and authors. So the cleaner your data, the better the dynamic and “behind-the-scenes” work we’re doing will work ensuring that the right customers are presented with the right book for a smooth and enjoyable buying and reading experience.
How to optimize your Series Metadata
1. Make sure that your Series Name is consistent across books.
2. Enter a number in the Volume Number field to indicate reading order.
How to add your Series Metadata
On Step 1 of the ebook publishing process, you will see the Series Name field.
Enter your Series Name. Please be sure to enter the exact same text in the Series Name field for all books in your series so that they match.
The Volume Number field will then appear (see below). If you do NOT enter a Series Name, then you won’t see the Volume Number field.
Enter a value in the Volume Number field (i.e series number) for the book (screenshot below).
This value should be a whole number (i.e. in this example, “14” and not “fourteen” or “XIV”). You may also enter 0, which some people might use for a prequel. In additional to being able to enter whole numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4), you may enter decimal values such as 1.5 or 2.5 for novellas or stories that take place between two full length novels.
Hit “Save and Continue” or “Save and return to Library”.
The end result that you will see on the Store page will look something like this, with the numeric value you entered appearing in a distinctive way that informs customers what order to read this series in and, very importantly, empowers us with the ability to help customers get to their next great read.
Please note that changes you make typically show up on the Kobo Store page within approximately 24 hours, but often take a bit longer to refresh into the search results list view of those same items due to standard search result caching.