Amazon is changing how we write

I want to make you click

Over the past few months, I’ve been poking around and slowly doing something that, had I described it to myself a scant few years ago, I would have no idea what I was talking about: improving the metadata on the backlist. 

First, let’s define backlist: (n): The most beautiful part of publishing. Backlist titles are old books. These books might be as old as, oh, one year, (Cleveland: Belt Publishing; 2020). As I explain in my book and elsewhere in the archives, they are the key to being a successful publishing house. Last Thursday was an excellent day because, according to my Ingram dashboard, we sold 100 old books—5 of this book here, 20 of that book there. Those books have been bought and paid for, and are waiting for their forever homes, and when 100 (or 10, or 10000) are adopted, our bottom line rises, with almost nothing in the way of pesky expenses to dampen its movement. 

But since “discoverability” is the name of the game—wait, no—any game that is a nominalization is an insipid, …