Edward Nawotka has a new article at Publishing Perspectives that answers some common questions about metadata in digital books, and I thought he made a particularly good point regarding where it belongs in a publishing workflow:
Q: Isn’t metadata just something the digital departments of publishers need to worry about?
A: Simply put, it needs to be a part of everyone’s job description. The problem comes when a house instills a “digital director” and everyone else starts to think “well, that’s not my job anymore.” Metadata is a tool that everyone can use to help make a book a success and keep it alive in the marketplace much longer. Many people outsource their metadata for e-books to the service providers who also convert and/or distribute their e-books, which can also work very well — provided they are one in the same. Having different sets of metadata spread across too many companies gets complicated when you want to change something and makes fixing problems when they arise all the more complicated.
Read the full post at Publishing Perspectives
(Photo: David Sifry)
