We cannot publish a book with some form of metadata. Can you image a book without a cover, or without a title? No? Well, that is because these are ways we, as readers, identify and find the specific book we’re looking for. Even something as generally basic as the book title can be copied by another author. In fact author can have similar names. That why there are numerous ways that a book can be identified using its metadata. Metadata are searchable elements, every book has that identify it to bookstores, libraries, and readers alike. Online and brick-and-mortar libraries and bookstores have librarians and bookstore clerks that need to use the ISBN and BISAC codes to keep track, categorize, and place books. And that is how readers also locate books where they are on their shelves. But guess you can just randomly pick a book as you’re browsing, which also be fun. But that is not an efficient way to find a book.
In the process of assigning a title an ISBN a publisher will enter the book’s other metadata too. That information must be consistent because it follows the book across many platforms. You’ll read more about that later.
Being that each author is unique, their metadata like, Other Works, will be unique. Books will have different a book title, description, audience demographic, and more. Moreover, before you can even upload your book files to a self-publishing platform for distribution you will need the above mentioned as well as the author’s name, book price, genre, and page count.