Publishing
A tidy dashboard is not the same thing as discoverability. Metadata can look immaculate and still do very little, which is a useful little lie publishers tell themselves if they only check whether the fields are filled in.
The real test is more awkward: can the reader who has not already been briefed find the book at all? The one who is browsing by mood, by topic, by accident. If the metadata only works when someone already knows the title, the author, and half the pitch, it is filing, not discovery.
The real test is more awkward: can the reader who has not already been briefed find the book at all? The one who is browsing by mood, by topic, by accident. If the metadata only works when someone already knows the title, the author, and half the pitch, it is filing, not discovery.
Metadata often gets treated like a label on a box, when it’s closer to scaffolding. Useful, but only if the surrounding structure is doing something. A lot of discovery problems are really classification problems in disguise: the book has been sorted into a drawer nobody opens. Which is a fairly expensive way to be invisible.