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Metadata Guidelines for Books

Authors, publishers, and selling partners are responsible for adhering to our content guidelines. We invest significant time and resources to enforce these guidelines, using a combination of machine learning, automation, and dedicated teams of human reviewers. We’ll remove content that does not adhere to these guidelines and promptly investigate any book when notified of potential noncompliance. If we remove a title, we let the author, publisher, or selling partner know and they can appeal our decision.





Book title

Titles are the most frequently used search attribute. The title field should contain only the actual title of your book as it appears on your book cover. Missing or erroneous title information may bury valid results among extraneous hits. Customers pay special attention to errors in titles and won't recognize the authenticity of your book if it has corrupted special characters, superfluous words, bad formatting, extra descriptive content, etc. Examples of items that are prohibited in the title field include but aren't limited to:

  • Unauthorized reference to other titles or authors
  • Unauthorized reference to a trademarked term
  • Reference to sales rank (e.g., "bestselling")
  • Reference to advertisements or promotions (e.g., "free")
  • Only Punctuation (e.g. "!!!!!!!!")
  • Using only "unknown", "n/a", "na", "blank", "none", "null", "not applicable"

If you're publishing multiple stories as one book, ensure the contents of your book are accurately reflected both in the title field and on the cover, by including terms such as "Collection," "Compilation," or "Series." Stories that are part of a series must be in sequential order within a book and collections of individual stories must have all stories listed in the metadata.

If you're publishing a companion book based on an original work, such as a summary, study guide, workbook, or analysis, begin your title with the term "Summary," "Study Guide," "Workbook," or "Analysis." When designing your companion book cover, make sure the term "Summary," "Study Guide," or "Analysis" appears before the title of the original work in a font at least as large as the rest of the title.

For print books, your title must be listed on the cover (on the spine or front cover). It must also match the metadata you entered during title setup. Title information doesn't need to appear in your manuscript, but it must match the metadata if it does.

Note: Ensure that there’s no language in your book title that implies your book is part of a bundled set or Boxed Set.



Subtitle

If your book has a subtitle, enter it here. A subtitle is a subordinate title that contains additional information about the content of your book. Your title and subtitle together must be fewer than 200 characters. The subtitle will appear on your book's detail page, and must adhere to the same guidelines as your title.



Series information

A series is a connected set of books. If your book is not part of a series, please leave this field blank. However, if your book is part of a series, enter the name of the series in the Series Name field. Identifying the name of the series helps customers find other Kindle books in the series. The Series Name field will show up after your book's title on your detail page. Because titles are the most often used search attribute, your series name must adhere to the book title guidelines above. When you enter a series name, enter only the name of the series. Do not include the series number or the title of the book. You'll enter series numbers in the series number field as digits only ("3" for the third book in a series, not "Book 3" or "Book 3 of 4").

Books in a series with the same series name can be linked to create a Kindle Series Collection page in order of series numbers in the Kindle Store. This improves the discoverability of all books in your series by showing customers all of the books that make up the series on a single page. Learn how to create or update a Series Collection page.

At this time, Series Collection pages are only available on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, and Amazon.co.jp.



Description

Entice readers with a summary of the story and characters. Don't give away anything that adds to the suspense or surprise. Let readers know what makes your book interesting, and give them a sense of what kind of book it is. If you’re stuck for ideas, research the back cover or inner dust jacket flap of books in your genre. Ask your friends or other authors to describe your book. Think of your book description as a 30 second elevator pitch to persuade a casual browser to buy your book. 

We cannot accept any of the following information in the description:

  • Pornographic, obscene, or offensive content
  • Phone numbers, physical mail addresses, email addresses, or website URLs
  • Reviews, quotes, or testimonials
  • Requests for customer reviews
  • Advertisements, watermarks on images or videos, or promotional material
  • Time-sensitive information (for example, dates of promotional tours, seminars, or lectures)
  • Availability, price, alternative ordering information (for example, links to other websites for placing orders)
  • Spoiler information for Books, Music, Video, or DVD (BMVD) listings
  • Any keywords or book tags phrases

You may choose to use HTML in your description. HTML uses pairs of angle-bracketed tags to provide display information text they surround. Learn more about supported HTML tags in a book description.


Author (required)

Enter the name of your book's primary contributor here. You are free to use a pen name, as long as it does not impair customers' ability to make good buying decisions.



Contributors (optional)

Contributors are the people involved in creating your book. You can use these fields to identify additional authors, editors, illustrators, translators, and any others who you want to give credit to, as long as they worked on that specific book. You can enter multiple contributors as needed. You are required to enter all contributors of a public domain book.

Note: Books that are translations of another work must credit the translator in the contributor field. If the work is not a new translation and the translator is unknown, the publisher should list the translator as "Anonymous" in the contributor field.

Do not add anything other than contributors here; don't add search keywords or other information. If you're publishing a companion book based on an original work, such as a summary, study guide or analysis, do not include the contributor(s) of the original work in the Author or Contributors fields.

For author contributor fields only: If you entered multiple author names in the author contributor fields, they will appear in the Kindle Store in the same sequence. All other contributor fields will appear in the Kindle Store below the author name(s).



Publisher

If you are the book's author or publisher, you may enter your name or the name of your publishing company here. KDP isn't a publisher, but a service that supports authors and/or publishers like you. Only the names of the author or publisher of the book should be entered in the publisher field. Customers see the publisher name on the book's detail page. To avoid confusion for them, we don't permit the following in the publisher field:

  • Reference to another publishing company, including any that previously published the book
  • Reference to Amazon or Amazon-affiliated companies
  • Reference to Kindle or Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
  • Websites or domain names


Keywords

Keywords can be a word or a phrase. For best results, we recommend using phrases that are 2-3 words long. To determine the right search keywords for your book, we suggest you think like a reader. What topics or genres are your readers searching for?

Avoid keywords that are not accurate descriptors of your book's central storyline, or keywords that are completely unrelated to what's in the book. Inaccurate keywords can lead to unexpected or confusing search results and provide a poor customer experience. We do not tolerate keywords that mislead or manipulate our customers. Examples of items that are prohibited as keywords include but are not limited to refererences to:

  • Other authors
  • Books by other authors
  • Sales rank (e.g., "bestselling")
  • Advertisements or promotions (e.g., "free")
  • Anything that is unrelated to your book's content
Learn more about keywords.

Categories

Categories are the sections of the Amazon site where customers can find your book. During title setup, you'll choose two categories from a list based on the BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications)code.
Avoid browse categories that are not relevant to your book's central storyline, or categories that are completely unrelated to what's in the book. Inaccurate browse categories can lead to unexpected or confusing search results and provide a poor customer experience. We do not tolerate selecting categories to mislead or manipulate our customers. Learn more about KDP Categories.


Cover image

The title, subtitle, author name, and series information on your cover should match the corresponding metadata fields. Covers that may be misleading because they closely resemble another book's layout, color scheme, fonts and/or images aren't allowed. If your book is a companion book, the cover image must meet the guidelines outlined in the Companion guides section of the Guide to Kindle Content Quality.


ISBN (Print Only)

An ISBN isn't required in your paperback or hardcover manuscript. We'll automatically add the 13-digit ISBN (EAN) to the barcode on the back cover. If you include your ISBN in your manuscript, it must match the ISBN you entered in the "Paperback Content" section during title setup. Learn more about ISBNs.


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