One message echoed throughout the Summit, and this session reinforced it once again: metadata is no longer optional. If search engines and AI systems cannot understand a book, they have little chance of recommending it.

For McIlroy, however, the industry is still treating metadata as an afterthought instead of a core publishing task. “Until you get the metadata right, you can't publish a new book," he pointed. "The metadata is so fundamental."

At the same time, he suggested that discoverability has evolved beyond traditional metadata alone. Generative AI is increasingly looking for richer contextual information: descriptions, excerpts, reviews, author biographies and other supporting material that helps explain what a book is actually about. "The best metadata about a book is the book," McIlroy noted, encouraging publishers to expose more of their content online whenever possible.

That observation naturally led the discussion to another often-overlooked asset: publishers' own websites. Rather than simply reproducing the same ONIX information available on retail platforms, both speakers suggested treating them as living repositories, enriched with reviews, excerpts and contextual information that AI systems can actually learn from.

If metadata helps AI understand books, AI is also changing how publishers understand readers. House explained that recommendation systems now make it possible to move beyond traditional demographic targeting. Instead of focusing only on age, gender or location, publishers can increasingly reach audiences based on emotions, values and interests.

Rather than replacing editorial intuition, AI expands publishers' understanding of who their readers might be, revealing opportunities that conventional marketing strategies can easily overlook.

"If your book doesn't get mentioned," McIlroy suggested, "think about how to solve that problem”. His recommendation was simple: ask AI questions that your own books should be able to answer. If they never appear in the responses, there's probably work to do.

Despite the session's strong focus on AI, neither speaker saw digital discovery as replacing physical spaces.

Neither speaker believed that AI would replace the human side of discoverability. Literary festivals, bookstore events and author conversations, they argued, remain some of the most powerful ways for readers to encounter books – particularly writers they weren't actively looking for. "I still am a big advocate of physical book events and author interaction sessions and literary festivals”, House said. "They still hold enormous value."

McIlroy agreed, pointing out that no single channel drives book sales on its own. Physical events, social media, search engines and AI recommendations all contribute to building an audience over time, making discoverability an increasingly multifaceted process rather than the result of one successful campaign.

Buried in the conversation was a point that might matter more than anything else discussed: publishers may already be sitting on their biggest opportunity, and it's not new at all. It's the backlist.

House challenged the idea that older titles are static, dead weight on a catalogue. Instead, she argued AI can help spot books quietly regaining cultural relevance, or connecting with readers who weren't even the original target audience. A sales spike, a shift in reader behavior, a viral moment, a broader cultural wave – any of these can signal that a forgotten title is due for a second life.

"Many publishers sit on huge backlists," she observed. "This is quite often where the gold mines will sit". McIlroy picked up the thread, invoking a line from publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin that's become something of an industry truism: "Every backlist book is brand new to someone who's never seen it before."

Neither speaker oversold what AI can actually do here – nobody claimed it's a crystal ball for the next bestseller. The real value, they suggested, is quieter than that: helping publishers understand today's readers more clearly, spot opportunities faster, and put books – even books that had fallen out of the spotlight – back in front of the readers most likely to fall for them.