11.1 EPUB Metadata

There are two ways to specify metadata for an EPUB. The first is to use the --epub-metadata option, which takes as its argument an XML file with Dublin Core elements.

The second way is to use YAML, either in a YAML metadata block in a Markdown document, or in a separate YAML file specified with --metadata-file. Here is an example of a YAML metadata block with EPUB metadata:

---
title:
- type: main
  text: My Book
- type: subtitle
  text: An investigation of metadata
creator:
- role: author
  text: John Smith
- role: editor
  text: Sarah Jones
identifier:
- scheme: DOI
  text: 'urn:doi:10.234234.234/33'
- scheme: ISBN-13
  text: 'urn:isbn:9780000000000'
publisher:  My Press
rights: © 2007 John Smith, CC BY-NC
ibooks:
  version: 1.3.4
...

The following fields are recognized:

identifier
Either a string value, or an object with fields text and scheme (optional), or a list of such objects. Valid values for scheme are ISBN-10, GTIN-13, UPC, ISMN-10, DOI, LCCN, GTIN-14, ISBN-13, Legal deposit number, URN, OCLC number, Co-publisher’s ISBN-13, ISMN-13, ISBN-A, JP e-code, OLCC number, JP Magazine ID, UPC-12+5, BNF Control number, ISSN-13, ARK, Digital file internal version number. In the text field, it is advisable to specify a URN as in the examples above. Note that quotes are needed around a YAML field containing a colon.
title
Either a string value, or an object with fields text, file-as (optional) and type (optional), or a list of such objects. Valid values for type are main, subtitle, short, collection, edition, extended.
creator
Either a string value, or an object with fields text, role (optional), and file-as (optional), or a list of such objects. Valid values for role are MARC relators, but pandoc will attempt to translate the human-readable versions (like “author” and “editor”) to the appropriate marc relators.
contributor
Same format as creator.
date
A string value in YYYY-MM-DD format. (Only the year is necessary.) Pandoc will attempt to convert other common date formats.
lang (or legacy: language)
A string value in BCP 47 format. Pandoc will default to the local language if nothing is specified.
subject
Either a string value, or an object with fields text, authority (optional), and term (optional), or a list of such objects. Valid values for authority are either a reserved authority value (currently AAT, BIC, BISAC, CLC, DDC, CLIL, EuroVoc, MEDTOP, LCSH, NDC, Thema, UDC, and WGS) or an absolute IRI identifying a custom scheme. Valid values for term are defined by the scheme.
description
A string value.
type
A string value.
format
A string value.
relation
A string value.
coverage
A string value.
rights
A string value.
belongs-to-collection
A string value. Identifies the name of a collection to which the EPUB Publication belongs.
group-position
The group-position field indicates the numeric position in which the EPUB Publication belongs relative to other works belonging to the same belongs-to-collection field.
cover-image
A string value (path to cover image).
css (or legacy: stylesheet)
A string value (path to CSS stylesheet).
page-progression-direction
Either ltr or rtl. Specifies the page-progression-direction attribute for the spine element.
accessModes
An array of strings (schema). Defaults to ["textual"].
accessModeSufficient
An array of strings (schema). Defaults to ["textual"].
accessibilityHazards
An array of strings (schema). Defaults to ["none"].
accessibilityFeatures
An array of strings (schema). Defaults to 
- "alternativeText"
- "readingOrder"
- "structuralNavigation"
- "tableOfContents"
accessibilitySummary
A string value.
ibooks
iBooks-specific metadata, with the following fields: