DocumentationExporting
Book details
Title, authors, publisher, ISBN, blurb and cover — what a shop matches your book against, and which fields block a listing.
Five tabs. Each carries a count of what is still missing from it, and the screen says Ready for a shop when nothing is.
Nothing here changes how the book looks. It is what a distributor matches the book against, and what a reader sees on a store page.
Title
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Book title | Required. A book still called Untitled is reported as an error |
| Subtitle | Set smaller under the title |
| Series | Printed above the title. Blank for a standalone book |
| Number in series | Text, not a number — a series has a Book 2.5 and a Book II |
People
Add someone for each contributor. The first is the author; the rest default to editor.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | As it prints |
| Role | Author, editor, translator, illustrator… |
| Filed under | How a library alphabetises them. Blank uses the name, surname first |
Publication
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Most retailers require one. Your own name is a valid answer |
| Imprint | A line of books within the publisher. Most books have none |
| Publication date | YYYY, YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD |
| Edition | “Second edition”, “Revised”. Blank for a first |
| ISBN (print) | ISBN-13 or ISBN-10. Hyphens and spaces ignored |
| ISBN (ebook) | A different ISBN from the print one |
| Copyright holder, year | Printed on the copyright page |
| Language |
The language is not cosmetic. It decides which hyphenation patterns are used, which quotation
marks the smart-quotes conversion produces, and what a screen reader announces. It must be a
standard language tag — en, fr, pt-BR — and a value that is not one is reported.
Discovery
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Description | The blurb on the store page |
| Keywords | Search terms. Added one at a time |
Neither blocks an export, but both are reported as Worth checking: a book with no blurb is a store page with nothing on it.
Cover
Ebook cover — the picture every store shows first. Its description is what a screen reader says in place of the image; blank falls back to the title.
Print cover — the flat sheet carrying back, spine and front together, sized from the page count.
Fixing from the export screen
Every metadata problem the export check finds carries a link straight to the tab that fixes it — Go to Details · people, Go to Details · cover. You do not have to work out which field it meant.