The same psychological thriller, twice: first with the metadata most first novels ship with, then after systematic optimisation. The book did not change. The discoverability did.
Read it field by field, across rather than down — the argument is in the comparison, not in either column on its own.
Before and after
Before — poor metadata
- Title
- Sarah's Story
- Subtitle
- None
- Categories
- Fiction › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary; Fiction › Mystery & Suspense
- Keywords
- sarah, story, woman, mystery, thriller, suspense, fiction
- Description
- Sarah thought she had the perfect life until everything changed. When strange things start happening, she doesn't know who to trust. This is a story about a woman who must face her past to save her future. Will she be able to figure out what's really going on before it's too late?
After — optimised metadata
- Title
- The Memory Thief
- Subtitle
- A Psychological Thriller
- Categories
- Fiction › Mystery › Psychological; Fiction › Thrillers › Psychological
- Keywords
- psychological thriller, memory loss, unreliable narrator, domestic suspense, mind games, psychological manipulation, twisted ending
- Description
- Every memory can be stolen. Every truth can be rewritten. Dr Sarah Chen specialises in erasing traumatic memories — until someone starts stealing hers. When Sarah wakes in her office with no memory of the last three days, she discovers her patient files have been altered and her research notes destroyed. As she races to recover her missing memories, she uncovers a conspiracy reaching into the highest levels of her research facility. But in a world where memories can be manufactured and stolen, how can Sarah trust her own mind to lead her to the truth?
What Actually Changed
The four moves
- The title took on genre work it was not doing before, and the subtitle finished the job
- The description opens on a hook rather than on setup — see the fiction formula in The Priority Stack
- Categories narrowed until ranking in the top 100 became possible
- Keywords became phrases a reader would actually type, not nouns from the book
The non-fiction version of this exercise, plus the seven-step framework for doing it to your own book, is in Non-Fiction Example & 7-Step Optimisation Framework.