Describe and classify the book
Check age and reading guidance
For children's, middle grade, and young adult titles, confirm the age range, grade range, and any reading level in the metadata match the book and the publisher's positioning.
Why it matters
For youth titles the age and grade fields are as important as the subject codes. They decide whether a school librarian finds the book when filtering for a grade, whether a retailer shows it under the right age, and whether a review outlet for children's books considers it in scope. A blank or wrong range makes the book effectively invisible to the people who buy it.
Your part
- What you do
- Verify. Someone else may do it. Inspect the result yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Publisher and Author. Publisher sets; author verifies
- When
- Before metadata is distributed to retailers and libraries, usually six to nine months before publication (Describe and classify the book: twelve to six months before publication, and before any preorder opens)
Your part changes with your publishing route.
How to do it
The full walkthrough
Books for young readers carry audience fields in their metadata: an interest age range (such as 8 to 12), a grade range (such as grades 3 to 7), and sometimes a reading level from a scheme such as Lexile or a guided reading level. Retailers use them to place the book in children's categories, school and library buyers use them to match the book to readers, and reviewers for youth titles expect them.
Ask what was entered, and check it against the book. A publisher usually sets these fields in line with the imprint's list, and a smaller feed may leave them blank, which retailers may read as adult. A middle grade novel entered with a young adult age range, or a picture book with no age range at all, lands in the wrong place. If you set the fields yourself, choose an age range that reflects the real reader rather than the widest possible net, and enter the same range everywhere. Reading level measures usually come from the measuring organization, so do not invent one.
Record the ranges in the Book Identity Sheet and re-check them at launch against live listings.
Common mistakes
- Leaving the fields blank, so the book is treated as adult.
- Setting a range from 0 to 18 to avoid excluding anyone, which excludes everyone.
- Entering a reading level that was guessed rather than measured.
- Mismatching the age range and the subject codes.
- Forgetting the audiobook or ebook records, which need the same fields.
Identifiers for Check age and reading guidance
Set a status on any record and it joins this step. All book identifiers.
| My status | Identifier | Why this matters | Yours |
|---|---|---|---|
| ONIX for Books ONline Information eXchange: the standard file that carries your book's details from your publisher or platform out to retailers and libraries. | If your subtitle is wrong at one retailer, that is one mistake; if it is wrong at a retailer, in a library catalog, and on Google Books, that is usually not three mistakes but one, in the feed, copied three times. It also explains why correcting it in one store often does not stick, because the next feed writes the old value back over your correction. Nobody acts on the feed directly: traditionally and hybrid published authors normally find out who owns it, which is the publisher's metadata or operations team and sometimes a separate distributor, and send corrections there, while a self-published book's feed is generated by the platform from the fields you filled in on its dashboard. Find the person or team that owns the book's feed so a correction goes to the source that can keep it fixed. | Nothing to record | |
| BISAC Subject Headings The standard list of subject category codes used in the United States and Canada to decide where a book is filed and shelved. | These codes decide which category paths your book lands in on retailer sites and, in a physical store, often which section it is shelved in, so a wrong or retired code can leave readers unable to find it by browsing. The codes travel inside the metadata feed, so one choice reaches many channels at once. Traditionally and hybrid published authors normally ask which codes were assigned and raise a concern if the book has landed somewhere wrong; if you publish the book yourself, you choose them in your platform's category fields. Record the current codes assigned to the book and check that they describe what the book honestly is. | Add your BISAC code |
What done looks like
- Interest age range and grade range entered for every format, matching the book's actual readership.
- Reading level entered only when a recognized scheme has assigned one.
- The same ranges in the publisher's feed, on retail listings, and in the Book Identity Sheet.
- Ranges consistent with the subject codes (a juvenile BISAC code with a juvenile age range).
Ask your publisher
Copy this into an email. Replace the bracketed parts with your details.
Sources and last checked
- Official source
- No single official page for this step.
- Last checked
- Not checked against its source yet.
- How confident we are
- Verified