Publish Your Book

Metadata

Metadata is the information that describes your book. Some things, like the book title and author name, you probably already know. Others, like description and subject category, should be carefully considered from the perspective of a customer. Providing good metadata for your book helps ensure it appears in relevant user searches.

Metadata fields

Some fields are required, but you should provide additional metadata if it applies.

Field	Description	Required
Title	Title of the book.	•
Subtitle	Subtitle of the book.
Phonetic Title	The phonetic title of a Japanese or Chinese book. This information provides a better search experience for customers. Learn more about adding a phonetic title.
Phonetic Subtitle	The phonetic subtitle of a Japanese or Chinese book. This information provides a better search experience for customers. Learn more about adding a phonetic subtitle.
Series Name	The series name, if the book was published as part of a series.
Series Number	The order in which the book displays in the series, if the book is part of a series that should be read in a particular order. You can only use numeric values, such as 3.
Display Text	In a book series, Apple Books displays “Book” by default. If you prefer to display your series as “Volume,” “Prequel,” or “Novella” indicate that here.
Author Name	The author of the book. You can add multiple authors by clicking the plus sign (+), or remove an author by clicking the minus sign (–) next to the author’s name. Only authors designated as Primary appear on the store.	•
Contributor Role	If other people contributed to your book, you can add them by clicking the plus sign (+) and modifying the Author role to their appropriate role, such as Illustrator, for example. Only contributors designated as Primary appear on the store.
Description	Write a detailed description of the book to display on Apple Books. It must contain at least 50 characters. Use Rich Text Format (RTF) to format your text instead of HTML tags. For example, use the Command-B keyboard shortcut to make highlighted text appear in bold. Or, copy and paste formatted text into the description. If you enter text that is not UTF-8 encoded, you may see incorrect symbols in your book description.	•
Subject Category	The subject category determines where your book displays on Apple Books. Apple Books supports BISAC, BIC, and other commonly used codes to categorize books. You need to provide a main subject and a secondary subject from at least one of these systems that best describes the general content of your book.	•
Interest Age (In Years)	Intended audience for your book. Interest Age is required for books intended for children and teenagers.
Contains Explicit Content	If your book contains sexually explicit content, set this field to Yes. Customers with parental restrictions enabled won’t be able to view or download the book.
Publisher	Name of the person or publisher that released the book.	•
Original Publication Date	The date your book was published originally. If it hasn’t been published before, enter the date you intend to publish your book. This is not the same as the release date.	•
Book Language	The primary language of the book.	•
Print Length	Total number of pages in the book.
Vendor ID	A unique and permanent number to identify this book. If this book has an ISBN, the Vendor ID should match the ISBN.	•
ISBN	An International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a 13-digit number that uniquely identifies one, unique title or a publisher’s unique edition of a title. ISBNs are optional, but helpful for sales and charting purposes. Learn more about purchasing an ISBN in the United States and other areas.