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Tags. Bloggers use them daily, but if you aren’t familiar
with that world, you may be a little confused about the concept. Hopefully,
this post will shed a little light and get you all tagging away. =)
Tagging takes a word or phrase and attaches it to your work
as a way to further categorize it based on theme, trope, tone, topic, etc. Not
only do tags inform a reader about what your content contains but it can also
be used as a way to search for similar books with similar subject matter or
style.
For example, a blogger might use tags to tell the reader
that a particular post is about “politics,” “rainbows,” “the middle east,” and
“cranberries.” (Yes, that would be a ridiculous post, I agree. LOL) Then, if
say I wanted to read more posts about cranberries, I could simply click on the
tag and (in most cases) it would take me to a list of all the posts that the
blogger has tagged as containing “cranberries.”
The same concept works here on Book
Country. You can add tags to your book when you upload or add
them later on your book modification page. This way, if you’ve written a
steampunk novel with blimps, vampires, and murder mystery (I know, another
interesting one…) someone who searches for the “vampire” tag in our search
function (or clicks on the “vampire” on another member’s book detail page),
then they would get a list of all the books on Book
Country that have been tagged as containing vampires,
including yours.
In addition, you can also tag for purposes of warning your
reader about what’s contained within your work. For example, we have tags for
graphic violence, graphic profanity, etc. so that your readers will know what
they’re about to read. This feature is great because if my grandmother were on Book Country, for example, she could avoid reading
anything that is too sexy or too violent for her tastes.
For a great example of tagging, I’m going to give a shout
out to Sparky for the tagging work done on the Hard SF book, Flight of the Last
Hope. See it here à http://www.bookcountry.com/Books/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=101907
So, give it a whirl, dear members. It’s actually pretty fun!
~Danielle
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Joined: 3/10/2011
Posts: 21
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My ADD brain is having a tool-blindness moment, but I don't see where to add in tags for books? I'll go look at some help files.
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Hi, Monday. It's in the section called "Classify Your Book" on the book modification page or original upload page.To the right of where it shows the image of your book, you'll see the section to choose your genre and tones and then below that is where you add tags 
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Joined: 3/10/2011
Posts: 21
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Thank you! I found it, following your directions and my book is all tagged up now.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 54
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Dear Danielle
Thanks for the detailed information on tags. I blog too, but what i fail to understand is tags are so subjective. So i may tag something as funny, but someone else might not find it funny. Is it right to tag it as such? In other words is it best to be cavalier and add as many tags as possible or to be conservative and use tags that have little to no room for disagreement?
Thanks
Annabelle
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That's a great question, Annabelle. You're absolutely right that tags are subjective in a lot of ways. I would suggest tagging your work as YOU think it should be tagged and then letting the community chime in if they disagree. The overall feedback portion of the review process can be used to discuss these things, as well as genre map placement.
It's so important for a writer to understand what they are actually writing. It's very common for people to think they've created one thing, when they've actually created another. we're hoping the community members will be able to help each other to figure out what exactly they've written so that they have the best chance of finding their true audience
Hope this helps!
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 54
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Dear Danielle
This certainly does help, thank you very much. I agree that if someone strongly disagrees with the way a piece of writing is tagged, they will voice their opinions.
Annabelle
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