Book metadata & information

Metadata details for a book include basic bibliographic information. Some settings are specific to Google Books or Google Play. You can edit this information in your Partner Center account. To edit multiple books at once, you can use a spreadsheet.

The genre, title, and an identifier such as the ISBN are required, but you should complete as many fields as possible. More data helps readers discover your books.

Tips: 

  • Partners who use ONIX: Any changes you make in the Partner Center should also be made in your ONIX feed. The next time you send an ONIX feed, the information you provided via ONIX will overwrite your current settings.
  • A lock icon lock outline indicates that Google has blocked edits to a metadata field that we found to be inaccurate. If you find a mistake, Please contact us.

Metadata fields

ISBN or other identifier

The ISBN for this edition of the book. If your book doesn't have an ISBN, it's assigned a unique identifier by our system. You can't edit this field.

If you need to change the book identifier:

  1. Open the Book Catalog.
  2. Find and select the book that requires the book identifier change.
  3. From the menu on the left, select the Book Info tab.
  4. Click the title’s book identifier that appears above the box that has the current identifier in it.
  5. Click Continue.
  6. In the box designated for book identifier, make the edits.
  7. Click Save.

Tip: When you update the book identifier:

  • The book will have a duplicate and the older version will be deactivated.
  • Ratings and reviews won’t carry over to the new book.
Format The type of book for this specific ISBN or other identifier. For a new book, this field is prefilled with ebook by default.
Title The title of the book.
Subtitle The subtitle of the book.
Description A description of the book, such as the back cover copy.
Language

The primary language of the book.

Select a list of languages or search for languages.

Age group The age range of the intended audience for the book.
Release date Leave this field blank if the book can be made available for sale on Google Play immediately. If the book isn't for sale yet, enter a date up to 2 years in the future for the book to become available. Use the format YYYY-MM-DD.

Important: This setting doesn't affect your ebook's preview availability on Google Books.

To change this setting:

  1. Sign in to the Partner Center.
  2. On the left, click Book Info and thenSettingsand thenShow advanced settings.
  3. Under "Allow preview before release date?", click No.
Allow Pre-orders? This will be available if the release date is in the future. Learn more about pre-orders.
Publication date The publication date of the book. This is bibliographic information and doesn't affect the book's availability. To limit availability, you must use the release date.
Publisher The name of the publisher. This is publicly displayed on Google Books preview pages as "Pages displayed by permission of..."
Page count The number of pages in the book.
Series name

If the book belongs to a series, make sure the series name has the exact same spelling and punctuation for every book in the series.

Volume in series

If the book belongs to a series, add the volume number of this book in the complete series.

If all volumes that exist in your account are numbered with no gaps and no number overlap, Play may create a designated page for the series. This page may be eligible for series-related promotional opportunities, like series bundles and notifications.

When a designated page for your series is created, the way Play displays your books will be optimized for the series experience.

If any changes you made to series name and series number don't update on the Play Store after 48 hours, ⁠contact us.

Related books

ISBNs for other books which are associated with this book. For example, if this book exists in both ebook and physical editions, you should provide the ISBN of the other format.

Learn more about how to manage multiple ISBNs.

For mature audiences? Select Yes if the book is for mature audiences only.
Subject or Genres

Use only one subject standard. We highly recommend Book Industry Subject and Category (BISAC) codes because genres in the Play Store are based on BISAC.

For publishers who already use another standard besides BISAC, there are other options available for your convenience. These codes are mapped to BISAC for our store.

  • BISAC (North America)
  • BIC (UK and Australia)
  • WGSneu (Germany)
  • C code (Japan)
  • CLIL (France)
  • UDC (Russia)
  • GKSS (South Korea)
  • Manga (Japan and South Korea)

After you select a subject standard, you can assign genres to a book. To choose the genre of a book, enter a keyword to find genres that match. We recommend you choose a maximum of 3 genres per book. The first genre should be the most relevant to the book. All 3 genres must be from the same standard.

Contributors Contributors typically include the author, editor, or illustrator. You can add as many contributors as needed. Narrator is required for audiobooks. You must also select whether the audiobook is read by a human narrator or synthesized voice. Learn more.
Biographical notes Information about the contributors.

Related resources

Need more help?

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