Helping AI Find Your Children's Book and Metadata Basics

Answering two reader questions.

Today, I’m answering two reader questions. I received about a dozen questions and plan to work through them over the next couple weeks. When I get finished with these, I’ll open it to new questions.

How Does Your Book Get Found on the Internet? SEO and GEO

Tricia G asks: What have you heard about Keysearch? It almost feels like it would be worth it if you have 30 books.

Keysearch is one of many tools that help you optimize your website, books listings, and anything else you’d find online. The question these days is what optimization do you need, SEO or GEO?

SEO is search engine optimization and for years it was the gold standard for making sure your information gets found. It’s still somewhat important, but as AI takes over, we’re moving to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), or AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization). They are quite different! The GEO term seems to have won the battle for which term to use, so I’ll use it here.

In SEO, you cared about keywords, thus the program Keysearch. In addition, links, a website’s authority, and other factors weighed in. For example, if you wrote a book about a horse becoming friends with a girl, you might use these keywords: friendship, horse, female. If you wrote a blog post about the book, and a major company linked to it—say, Taylor Swift—then the links to and from the post would tell the search engines that this is an important post. They’d show it to more people.

GEO, however, doesn’t care so much about keywords and links. Jane Friedman recently reported on a presentation at the US Book Show, From SEO to GEO: Optimizing Books for AI Discovery, presented by Cameron Lennon (paid article). Lennon said that it’s common practice to start your Amazon listing with an award list.

For my new title, NIGHT: How Copernicus Made the Sun Stand Still and the Earth Move, it might read like this:

“…accessible…immersive…historical development of ideas.” Kirkus Reviews

“Cheerful, childlike illustrations supplement Pattison’s especially adept work describing complex concepts in kid-friendly terms. . . Unique in coverage, this makes a great read-aloud and offers considerable STEM curriculum support.” Booklist

“…easily understandable language for young readers….VERDICT Highly recommended. School Library Journal

Patterns in the Night Sky

On a March night in 1497, a young Nicholas Copernicus watched the moon glide across the sky and hide a distant star. When the star reappeared too soon, he knew something was wrong with the accepted science of his time. That single observation launched a lifetime of questions—and changed how we understand our place in the universe.

But that doesn’t help GEO discover and understand your book. Instead, it needs a simple declarative sentence that answers: What kind of book is this? Who is it for? What does the reader experience?

Instead, it needs basic information about the book, something like this:

This nonfiction children’s picture book explains how the famous astronomer Nicholas Copernicus observed the night sky and realized that the sun is at the center of the solar system. For curious kids, ages 7-12, or STEM/STEAM classrooms. Book 11 of the Moments in Science series.

WHAT: nonfiction children’s picture book. Book 11 of the Moments in Science series. This gives the genre and that it’s a picture book for kids.

WHAT-theme or one-sentence plot: Explains how “the famous astronomer Nicholas Copernicus observed the night sky and realized that the sun is at the center of the solar system.”

WHO - intended reader : curious kids, ages 7-12. STEM/STEAM classrooms. Be sure to mention ages or grade levels for your children’s books. I’m trying here to appeal to both parents and teachers.

THEN, you go into the normal description, including awards, reviews, synopsis, author biography, illustrator biography, etc.

WHO - comparables: I didn’t add any comparable books to this description. If you are writing fiction, it’s helpful to compare it to similar books, or at least mention comparable authors.

Reader Experience: Will your reader weep, delight, puzzle, hate, or love? What emotions will they experience? For nonfiction, I’m trying to satisfy curiosity, so I mentioned the “curious kids.”

To me, the declarative statements seems a boring way to start a description on Amazon! My instinct is to use something that captures the audience, a strong hook. But GEO says to get the basics done first.

In the end, I think it’s going to be a combination: we have a human audience who needs that hook and understands the importance of awards and reviews. But the AI audience needs to be grounded first. It’s going to be a dance to make sure both audiences find our books. So, I might add in an SLJ recommendation:

“Highly recommended” by the School Library Journal, this nonfiction children’s picture book explains how the famous astronomer Nicholas Copernicus observed the night sky and realized that the sun is at the center of the solar system. This book is for curious kids, ages 7-12, or STEM/STEAM classrooms. Book 11 of the Moments in Science series.

There are no rights and wrongs here. We’re just trying to capture the attention of the technology that can bring our books attention.

GEO experts also recommend that you use the A+ content available in the KDP dashboard, optimize your author listing on AuthorCentral, keep your own website updated, and include accurate information everywhere you can. Remember that AI can read text on an image. It also understands video, so, add those extra videos when possible.

I’ve not yet started the process of updating all my descriptions for GEO! With about 80 books out, that’s a lot of metadata updates. But over the next six months or so, it’s a project I need to tackle.

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Another unexpected resource for GEO is Reddit, where people can have anonymous conversations. Because they are anonymous, they tend to answer more honestly, explaining their mistakes, giving more in-depth critiques, etc. That gives it authority when AI crawls it for answers. Find Reddits related to your book! Learn the Reddit culture, of course, before you post. But if you like the Reddit style of social media, it can help your GEO.

Short answer: SEO, while still important, is being taken over by GEO. Therefore, I wouldn’t pay for a keyword service like Keysearch. But your situation may vary. Look at your books to decide if it’s a service that will bring in readers or not.

Tricia G also asks: Where and how do we best accumulate metadata?

Metadata is all the information about your book: title, subtitle, description, sizes, number of pages, categories, keywords, author, illustrator, author bio, illustrator bio, ISBN, age level, grade level, series name, # within the series, BISAC categories (three columns), price (MSRP), publisher’s name, physical size, language, copyright year, ASIN, format (hardcover, paperback, etc), reading level, review quotes, and so on.

The easiest way to manage the metadata is to use spreadsheet that includes all the metadata for each book.

Download a blank metadata spreadsheet template here.

The blank spreadsheet only has columns that list the most common metadata elements for books, but feel free to update as needed. For example, if there are two authors, just add two more columns for Author 2 and Author 2 Biography.

The template is meant to keep information for all the books you publish. You should have a row for each ISBN, because ISBN is tied to format. You’ll have a row for hardcover, paperback, audiobook, and ebook versions of a title. Add columns specific to a format if needed. For example, for audiobooks, you may want to add a column for total playing time. You may not need that if the platforms you use for audiobooks don’t request it. In other words, customize it to your needs.

This spreadsheet is invaluable when you upload a book to a new platform. All the information is now in one place.

When you have published about 50 books or more, you may outgrow the spreadsheet and want to move to ONIX. That’s the format that the publishing industry uses to exchange information about books. It’s complicated and programs are scarce for the small publisher. I use ONIXEdit.com, a subscription-based program that prices based on how many titles you have listed. I don’t recommend ONIX until you reach at least 50 books, and only if you’re comfortable with slightly complicated technology.

How Do you USE the Metadata?

Basically, the metadata includes everything about the book that is needed to list your book on platforms and reasonably hope to be discovered. It’s not to share with anyone else, it’s just a spreadsheet that 1) gives you instant access to information. 2) It keeps you organized! Instead of hunting for information or recreating it on the spot, you have a resource to pull up and refer to. When you upload a title, just copy and paste the information from your spreadsheet. 3) It keeps you consistent across platforms.

Be sure to keep it updated! If you receive a great review, immediately put the review quote on the spreadsheet. When you update prices, update your metadata. Make it the most up-to-date resource for information about your books and keep it updated.

How do you create and use your metadata and keep it organized?