Amazon Book Categories
With each book I publish, I agonize over which book categories to use to list the books on KDP, which translates to their listings on Amazon. You only get to choose three categories on KDP, and obviously, those choices help readers find the books - or not.
With Maverick for the Built Environment, biography was the obvious choice. But...there are all kinds of biographies. I chose "biography: artists, architects, and photographers" - which is kind of a weird set of choices - "biography: science and technology". When I first published the book, it topped out at 272 on Kindle under "biography: artists, architects, and photographers". That was amazing; today, two weeks later, it's at 909, which is still amazingly high. Amazon also added the book to "biographies: scientists", which I would argue doesn't really apply. And also to "artist and architect biographies", which is somehow different than "biography: artists, architects, and photographers" where it is also listed.
To try to get more views on Amazon for my fantasy books, where there are millions of fantasy novels, I tried to be a little more selective than just "fantasy". Eric did some research, and between us, we came up with "fantasy: epic" - which I think of as tales with life-and-death choices - and "juvenile fiction: fantasy & magic". The idea of "juvenile fiction" was to get younger readers to consider the trilogies; Harry Potter and the Anne McCaffrey books have created young readers for fantasy series. KDP didn't like the combination, though. It didn't understand how a book could be both juvenile fiction and adult fiction. Clearly, the algorithm was not designed by authors. As with Dad's biography, Amazon also has added categories for the fantasy trilogies. The last book in the first trilogy, The Prophecy Fulfilled, is #48,072 in sword and sorcery fantasy and #83,774 in children's fantasy & magic books. Sword and sorcery fantasy is another category I thought I'd used for the trilogies, though KDP doesn't reflect it. There are not really swords in my fantasy trilogies. But there is lots of sorcery, aka magic.
The last category of books I write, though, has proved the most difficult to categorize. I called the novels I write about love and life from a woman's perspective (first person narration) fictional autobiographies or fictional biographies. In KDP, I'm using the choices of "romance: contemporary" and "women's fiction: contemporary". On Amazon, they have also categorized the books under "biographical fiction", which I don't think I knew was a category. The problem with these categories are that I don't think of my novels as romances, at least not the kinds of romances I've read since I was a teenager. While the women and men I write about fall in love, and often have sex as a result, there is not a focus on the sex part. I don't write sex scenes in graphic detail. I chose "romance: contemporary" as a category because a lot of women read from that category. I just hope anyone buying one of my books and expecting lots of sex isn't disappointed. Likewise, "biographical fiction" is problematic as a category - to me - because the novels are usually only about a small part of the woman's life, the meeting and falling in love - not an entire lifetime. There's usually some other elements to the novels, as well, generally related to how they get past themselves and do the falling in love part. So, in that regard, romance is the focus on the books. But "biography", to me, implies a whole life's novel. So, I worry, again, about whether people will be disappointed in buying the books with that category when they find out the novels only cover part of the main character's life. Overall, I think "women's fiction: contemporary" is probably the best fit. I've read other authors in this genre, like Emily Giffin, and I would say my novels are similar in nature. Girl meets boy. Problems get in the way. Girl and boy have to find their way past them to find love.
When and if I ever do full marketing campaigns for my writing, I'll probably have to rethink these categories. Again. Maybe.
With Maverick for the Built Environment, biography was the obvious choice. But...there are all kinds of biographies. I chose "biography: artists, architects, and photographers" - which is kind of a weird set of choices - "biography: science and technology". When I first published the book, it topped out at 272 on Kindle under "biography: artists, architects, and photographers". That was amazing; today, two weeks later, it's at 909, which is still amazingly high. Amazon also added the book to "biographies: scientists", which I would argue doesn't really apply. And also to "artist and architect biographies", which is somehow different than "biography: artists, architects, and photographers" where it is also listed.
To try to get more views on Amazon for my fantasy books, where there are millions of fantasy novels, I tried to be a little more selective than just "fantasy". Eric did some research, and between us, we came up with "fantasy: epic" - which I think of as tales with life-and-death choices - and "juvenile fiction: fantasy & magic". The idea of "juvenile fiction" was to get younger readers to consider the trilogies; Harry Potter and the Anne McCaffrey books have created young readers for fantasy series. KDP didn't like the combination, though. It didn't understand how a book could be both juvenile fiction and adult fiction. Clearly, the algorithm was not designed by authors. As with Dad's biography, Amazon also has added categories for the fantasy trilogies. The last book in the first trilogy, The Prophecy Fulfilled, is #48,072 in sword and sorcery fantasy and #83,774 in children's fantasy & magic books. Sword and sorcery fantasy is another category I thought I'd used for the trilogies, though KDP doesn't reflect it. There are not really swords in my fantasy trilogies. But there is lots of sorcery, aka magic.
The last category of books I write, though, has proved the most difficult to categorize. I called the novels I write about love and life from a woman's perspective (first person narration) fictional autobiographies or fictional biographies. In KDP, I'm using the choices of "romance: contemporary" and "women's fiction: contemporary". On Amazon, they have also categorized the books under "biographical fiction", which I don't think I knew was a category. The problem with these categories are that I don't think of my novels as romances, at least not the kinds of romances I've read since I was a teenager. While the women and men I write about fall in love, and often have sex as a result, there is not a focus on the sex part. I don't write sex scenes in graphic detail. I chose "romance: contemporary" as a category because a lot of women read from that category. I just hope anyone buying one of my books and expecting lots of sex isn't disappointed. Likewise, "biographical fiction" is problematic as a category - to me - because the novels are usually only about a small part of the woman's life, the meeting and falling in love - not an entire lifetime. There's usually some other elements to the novels, as well, generally related to how they get past themselves and do the falling in love part. So, in that regard, romance is the focus on the books. But "biography", to me, implies a whole life's novel. So, I worry, again, about whether people will be disappointed in buying the books with that category when they find out the novels only cover part of the main character's life. Overall, I think "women's fiction: contemporary" is probably the best fit. I've read other authors in this genre, like Emily Giffin, and I would say my novels are similar in nature. Girl meets boy. Problems get in the way. Girl and boy have to find their way past them to find love.
When and if I ever do full marketing campaigns for my writing, I'll probably have to rethink these categories. Again. Maybe.
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