A lot of conversation ensues about Amazon's decision to remove tags from Kindle pages. Tags--you know, those descriptive one to two word entries that are supposed to refer to what's in the book. Blogger calls them "labels"; the Internet search calls them "keywords." Whatever, Amazon has removed them from the Kindle pages, and they aren't available for indie authors to use on the publishing page.
An overview of this can be found at Taleist; and I agree, there have been a lot of bad practices regarding tags, including authors tagging each others' works that they haven't even read. I've also noticed bad tagging practice over at netgalley.com where publishing houses give their titles all sorts of tags that don't apply. Using "romance" is almost across the board by many houses, since they feel that's a hot item. "Thriller" is another. Unfortunately, the plan backfires with me, as I'm not interested in romances or thrillers; I see those tags and move on.
It's a shame the system has been misused so abundantly that Amazon has changed the format. It is also a shame that publishers and indie authors can't be satisfied that the descriptions of their work will draw in readers. With so many other social media and networking ways to promote a book, misusing tags seems silly.
This is an interesting topic, Kae. Initially, tagging started out as a way for indie writers to get their works noticed and so their books would have a chance at popping up among the Big Six offerings in amazon searches. I supported that because indie writers did not have massive PR machines behind them.
ReplyDeleteIt is too bad the tags were misused. People were tagging books with protest tags like "too expensive" and goofy genres like you mentioned. It totally went askew.
So many people with their own agenda; I guess it could have been expected. Unfortunate.
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