Tagging: A new way of organizing and marketing books
A growing number of book lovers are using tags to provide their own way of classifying books. Amazon and some library online catalogs now allow users to use tags as a supplement to the hierarchical category system.
Book tagging allows people to assign trendy, granular labels to books -— nuances beyond the world's hippest, brainiest librarians. For example, there's no library category or Amazon tab for steampunk, a subgenre of speculative fiction. But using labels, aficionados can dissect it into all its subsubgenres, including timepunk, bronzepunk, stonepunk and clockpunk —- all terms that are deadly serious to steampunkers.
Likewise, there's all kinds of books that are lumped into "queer fiction," but there's no official book classifications for any of it. Traditional subject headings aren't relevant to personal identity, but tags fill the gap.
Tagging is an individual activity with global utility. Each of the 3.5 million books in Amazon's catalogue could be assigned its own unique "category" yet reside in thousands of other categories at the same time.
Amazon tags
Amazon added its tagging feature in 2005, and made it more prominent -— higher on book detail pages —- than its regular categories lists. Amazon tags are publicly viewable unless users designate them as private. You can manage your tags through a "Your Tags" field at the bottom of every Amazon page.
On Amazon, tags are another pathway for readers to discover your book. Authors and publishers can increase their visibility by adding the obvious keywords appropriate to their book. Amazon tags are indexed by Google and other search engines.
As more book readers begin tagging, finding niche content will become easier than ever. Tags assigned to obscure books will be rare. A few common tags will be used by huge numbers of users (book, read, buy, interesting) and are visible to everyone. But most tags, including the more useful ones, will be used by just a few users (bizarre apocalpytacism). Many tags may be used by just a few people, and assigned to just one or two books, enabling a niche of one.
On Amazon, you can view all your tags here.
Here you can add or delete tags, and designate them public or private. You can also edit or remove tag you've created by clicking on Edit from the book's product page.
You can view the tags for any Amazon customer who's made at least one purchase, unless they've chosen to keep their tags private.
Book tagging allows people to assign trendy, granular labels to books -— nuances beyond the world's hippest, brainiest librarians. For example, there's no library category or Amazon tab for steampunk, a subgenre of speculative fiction. But using labels, aficionados can dissect it into all its subsubgenres, including timepunk, bronzepunk, stonepunk and clockpunk —- all terms that are deadly serious to steampunkers.
Likewise, there's all kinds of books that are lumped into "queer fiction," but there's no official book classifications for any of it. Traditional subject headings aren't relevant to personal identity, but tags fill the gap.
Tagging is an individual activity with global utility. Each of the 3.5 million books in Amazon's catalogue could be assigned its own unique "category" yet reside in thousands of other categories at the same time.
Amazon tags
Amazon added its tagging feature in 2005, and made it more prominent -— higher on book detail pages —- than its regular categories lists. Amazon tags are publicly viewable unless users designate them as private. You can manage your tags through a "Your Tags" field at the bottom of every Amazon page.
On Amazon, tags are another pathway for readers to discover your book. Authors and publishers can increase their visibility by adding the obvious keywords appropriate to their book. Amazon tags are indexed by Google and other search engines.
As more book readers begin tagging, finding niche content will become easier than ever. Tags assigned to obscure books will be rare. A few common tags will be used by huge numbers of users (book, read, buy, interesting) and are visible to everyone. But most tags, including the more useful ones, will be used by just a few users (bizarre apocalpytacism). Many tags may be used by just a few people, and assigned to just one or two books, enabling a niche of one.
On Amazon, you can view all your tags here.
Here you can add or delete tags, and designate them public or private. You can also edit or remove tag you've created by clicking on Edit from the book's product page.
You can view the tags for any Amazon customer who's made at least one purchase, unless they've chosen to keep their tags private.
Labels: social networking, tags
posted by Steve Weber at 12/03/2006
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