<nil> when parsing xml string in golang

I would like to parse xml using golang. Being new to using go, I've read articles around the web, explaining how to parse XML but I'm not sure why my return value is nil in this case.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
	//"io/ioutil"
    "encoding/xml"
)

func check(e error) {
    if e != nil {
	    panic(e)
    }
}

type Books struct {
    XMLName xml.Name `xml:"Books"`
    BookList []Book `xml:"Books>Book"`
}

type Book struct {
    title string `xml:"title,attr"`
	author string
    published string
}

func main() {
    //f, err := ioutil.ReadFile("xml/Books.xml")
	//check(err)

	var data = []byte(`
		<Books>
			<Book title="A Brief History of Time" author="Stephen Hawking" published="1988">
				<title>title here</title>
				A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a 1988 popular-science book by British physicist Stephen Hawking. It became a bestseller and sold more than 10 million copies in 20 years.
			</Book>
			<Book title="Steve Jobs" author="Walter Isaacson" published="2011">
				Steve Jobs is the authorized self-titled biography book of Steve Jobs. The book was written at the request of Jobs by Walter Isaacson, a former executive at CNN.
			</Book>
		</Books>
	`)

	b := Books{}
	o := xml.Unmarshal([]byte(data), &b)
	fmt.Println(o)
}

I put the debugging feedback in a comment but I've just modified your example to work and it can be tested here; https://play.golang.org/p/_UIph2je7f

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    //"io/ioutil"
    "encoding/xml"
)

func check(e error) {
    if e != nil {
        panic(e)
    }
}

type Books struct {
    XMLName xml.Name `xml:"Books"`
    BookList []Book `xml:"Book"`
}

type Book struct {
    Title string `xml:"title,attr"`
    Author string `xml:"author,attr"`
    Published string `xml:"published,attr"`
}

func main() {
    //f, err := ioutil.ReadFile("xml/Books.xml")
    //check(err)

    var data = []byte(`
        <Books>
            <Book title="A Brief History of Time" author="Stephen Hawking" published="1988">
                <title>title here</title>
                A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a 1988 popular-science book by British physicist Stephen Hawking. It became a bestseller and sold more than 10 million copies in 20 years.
            </Book>
            <Book title="Steve Jobs" author="Walter Isaacson" published="2011">
                Steve Jobs is the authorized self-titled biography book of Steve Jobs. The book was written at the request of Jobs by Walter Isaacson, a former executive at CNN.
            </Book>
        </Books>
    `)

    b := Books{}
    o := xml.Unmarshal([]byte(data), &b)
    fmt.Println(o)
    fmt.Println(b)
}

Here's a rundown of the four changes I made;

1. print the Books object instead of the err returned from Unmarshal

2. uppercase the first letter of fields on Book to make them 'exported' so they can be get/set by other packages (the unmarshaller in this case)

3. add xml attributes. In exporting the fields it makes it so there isn't an implicit string match so you gotta explicitly specify which xml value is read into each field

4. update the XML path for BookList for this you said it would be Books>Book but that implies another level of nesting that didn't exist in your xml. This object is Books, the elements you want in that list would have a relative xpath of simply Book so that's what you put there.