If you add a "tag" for example "middle east" for a book about Iran, does that cause the book to be grouped with others in that group? Thereby making it more visible to members looking for books on that subject. In other words do you get more exposure for your book by tagging it or labeling it?

It kind of depends. It will put it in the list with all other books using the Tag "middle east" and anyone looking at the Tag list for that will see it, but Tags are not searchable so that would not cause the book to come up if someone searched for the term middle east. So for that purpose I don't think it is going to add massive exposure because its only going to hit those people who make use of Tags. Someone looking at the book details page will probably already see things that indicate it is a book about the middle east.

Tagging other books to send traffic to your book (when appropriate) will add exposure to your book because that will put the information about your book on the details page of the other book, something the person on that page may not have known about. Follow?

How do you add a tag to a book? wow so many things I have to learn here! lol

Ellen, everyday I learn something here!

Melanie, thanks, but how do I tag another book to link it to mine?? I promise I will look it up!!

(help Doc and "the Librarian" are our friends)

You can also add genres to books.  Under the data edit option.  The genre categories decide how a book shows up in searches and in the banners.  So this little setting at the bottom of the page is very important.

Don't think of genre as just subjects like science fiction or mystery.  There are a whole slew of them.  History.  Non-fiction.  Religions.

Ellen, to tag a book, go to any book's listing.  Scroll down until you see something that looks like this:

Apply your own tag to this book:  [_____________________] +Tag

You'll be able to type in any tag name you want. 

Welcome!

I'm a tagging fiend.  And they are searchable, but only in a very round-about, back-door sort of way.

They aren't "searchable" in that typing the words in the site's search function will NOT search the Tags. But you can "search" for tags by adding one you want to see to a book and then clicking on that Tag to get a list of all the books the Tag has been applied to.

Melanie, thanks, but how do I tag another book to link it to mine?? I promise I will look it up!!  - --  - The Tags don't really "link" the books, but say ISBN XXX is a highly Wishlisted book and I have YYY of the same book- same binding and everything- but my book is a rare version no one knows about. I can go to ISBN XXX and add a Tag to it that says "also available under ISBN YYY". People wishing for XXX may now see that Tag and go looking for my copy and my copy gets a lot more exposure than it would have if it didn't Tag XXX.

Tags are, IMO, a kind of unfinished project on PBS. They set them up with grander intentions and planned on them being searchable, and then they snowballed out of control because everyone could add whatever the heck they wanted and the personal Taggers clashed with the people who wanted the Tags to be a nice neat universal list of club Tags and the project just got left by the wayside and the Wiki came along  where a lot of the info being added in the Tags coud be added in a more structured format and they tried to stear focus to that.

I think I've read in another thread that some people hate tags and turn them off.  Personally, I really like them.  Even if you've filtered down to a genre or used some other keyword, it helps to have another clue that you might like a particular book.  For me, a brief plot or character note is the most useful.

Lori, another thing to help your books "sell themselves" -- some of the books you've posted have listings which are missing a cover photo and/or plot description.  Those can be very helpful when members stumble across a book title and consider ordering it, or when they're ordering multiple titles from your shelf, and they can be added from the "Data Edit" menu, just as Emily suggested for subject headings.  If you need more guidance, feel free to send me a PM and I'll walk you through it if you wish to give it a try. ;-)

Thank-you everyone for some excellent thoughts and suggestions! I am going to tinker with these areas and try to improve my book shelf. Will keep you updated. Thanks---Lori

I find that reviews can be helpful in getting your books looked at, especially with books in a series or by a popular author who has written a dozen or more in the same genre. If someone is considering getting another book by the same author, and they have a bunch of choices, good reviews can help them pick one over the others.  I look at reviews all the time when I'm searching for books here.

(by good reviews, I don't mean "kept me up all night reading", "best book I've read all year", or simply typing in the summary on the back of the book.  A short 2 or 3 sentence review explaining likes and dislikes about a book, especially comparing to the author's other books works for me!)