As book discovery continues to plague authors of every ilk in a market that is saturated with content, platforms like Smashwords continue to look for new ways to help authors bring readers to their books easily. Today, the ebook distribution platform announced a new feature, Series Manager, aimed at helping authors lump their series titles together for easier search capabilities.
“It’s not uncommon for the books in some series to make no reference to their series in the book title, book cover or book description,” stated Smashwords’ CEO Mark Coker in a blog post about the new offering. “This makes it difficult for readers to identify all the books in a series, or books in related series, and makes it difficult for retailers to properly merchandise them. Series Manager helps solve this problem.
“Smashwords will provide the new series metadata, as input by the author or publisher, to our retailers. Each retailer will handle the metadata differently. Some will make use of all the data, and others might cherry pick. Either way, the improved metadata will make it easier for retailers to enhance the discoverability of Smashwords books today while having the capability to develop improved discoverability features in the future.”
Smashwords was also proud to announce that its founder, Mark Coker, was tapped by the Book Industry Study Group for nomination for its first-ever Disruptor Award, joining names like Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks and Wattpad’s founder Allen Lau in the nomination.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.