Publishers
understand the information about their e-books, such as author, title, and ISBN
number, needs to be right. But, new Book Industry Study Group findings show that 95% of the metadata
publishers use on their e-book titles is incorrect by the time it reaches the
point of sales of online booksellers.
The
research shows nearly half of the responding publishers use an automated system
to check if their metadata on an online site is correct. A third check manually,
while a fifth don’t bother to check their information at all. The study also
suggests that when publishers are aware their metadata has been changed, about
half have no idea where the change has occurred.
“When something is wrong at retail, it can be
hard to fix because it isn’t clear where the change took place,” said Brian
O’Leary of digital publishing consultancy Magellan Media, who is authoring the
study. “If you don’t fix it at the source, it keeps coming back.”
