Metadata intelligence for publishers
Books succeed when readers can find them.
Kadaxis is an independent metadata intelligence firm. For fifteen years we have worked with the world's largest publishing houses, and the most distinctive independent presses, on one discipline: the keyword and metadata work that determines whether a book is found on Amazon.
Begin a conversation →- Fifteen years.
- More than thirty-five publishing houses.
- Hundreds of thousands of titles.
Approach
A single discipline, refined.
Readers search for books in language that is rarely the same as the language in publisher catalogs. For fifteen years we have specialized in closing that gap, combining retailer search data, editorial judgment, and proprietary research methods developed across hundreds of thousands of titles. Each engagement is list-specific. Nothing we deliver is templated.
Read about our methodology →Notes from the Field
Occasional writing on metadata, discoverability, and the economics of publishing online. Sent a few times a year. Read on site, or have it sent to you.
METHOD The narrow space where keywords actually work
For a book keyword to do anything useful, it has to clear four independent tests: someone has to be searching for it, Amazon has to consider the book relevant to it, it has to add signal the rest of the metadata does not already supply, and the book has to be able to rank for it. Most keyword candidates fail at least one.
METHOD Not every keyword is doing work
In our recent analysis, only about eight percent of publisher-assigned book keywords produced a visible match in retailer search. The other ninety-two percent are not wrong; they are mostly repeating signals the rest of the metadata already supplies.
METHOD Relevance is not the same thing as ranking
Most keyword strategies treat search visibility as a single problem. It is two problems, in sequence, and confusing them is why so much keyword work fails to move performance.
Kadaxis was founded in 2010 and named BookTech Company of the Year at the FutureBook Awards in 2016. We contributed to the Book Industry Study Group's 2018 keywords best-practices standard. After several years operating with a smaller list, we are taking on new publishing partners again, with refined methodology and proprietary tooling developed across hundreds of thousands of titles.
If you are a publisher considering metadata work, we would like to hear from you.
Contact Kadaxis →