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Unlocking Secret Amazon Categories!
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Thanks for sharing this! It made me go back and revisit some keywords that I've used in the past. (And thank goodness that I was mostly on target when I put them in place. Egads, there are a lot of opportunities for things to go sideways in this industry.)
Thanks for sharing great information
Yes, this is nice! I wish I had discovered it long ago, but just recently I found about it through another source! Nice that you shared it here :)
I've just spent way too long reading through this - ha! Thank you everyone for your help. It was great to see what has worked for people and what hasn't.
Some of my keywords are on that list and have worked in the past and some haven't at all. Who knows the inner workings of the amazon brain.
I say keep changing them up and eventually, hopefully, something will stick!
I have seen this but didn't dig into it like I should have. Thanks for the reminder.
I'm not sure if anyone mentioned it already but in relation to categories and keywords, Kindle Samurai looks like a really good piece of software to help get some increased visibility with keywords. Here's the link if anyone's interested:http://kindlesamurai.net/jvzoo/
Has anyone been able to get in one of the Literature & Fiction subcategories? There's not a main category for Literature & Fiction when you select the categories for your book, so I'm not sure what category you would need to be in. The keywords I used for the Romance subcategories worked.
K.B. wrote: "Has anyone been able to get in one of the Literature & Fiction subcategories? There's not a main category for Literature & Fiction when you select the categories for your book, so I'm not sure what..."As far as I can tell, you have to contact Amazon and request them. I thought they were all keyword related, but there are a ton that don't work.
Thank you, that helps. I thought I was missing something.
Christina wrote: "Achievement unlocked!Yes, I strongly suggest everyone read through the KDP FAQ before publishing with Amazon. It's short, written in plain language, and does indeed have a LOT of helpful info, li..."
Thanks for the tip!
Okay so after watching a webinar on this very topic I have come to realize that keywords play a part in helping your books show up when people type them in but don't really factor into your categories. They do put it depends on how well you place and use them. I have also leaned that its a good idea to go into Amazon's best sellers list and look up the categories that best suit your novel and write Amazon and they will make the changes for you. There's even a section in contacts just for this very thing. You can ask to change up to two categories and replace two. Its suggested you do it for kindle store not for book store. The idea is if you find a small category that your book fits in you should use it as it will help your rating and potentially lead to sales. Amazon is constantly changing these categories every few months so what may work now may not down the road do be sure to check frequently on what the categorise are. Look up the best sellers of the categories you want to be in. See what categories They are using, if your book fits then make the change. The better the category the better the visibility. You should also study and take notes on the Top Ten authors in your categories, what are they doing to get these sales? What does their book description look like? Their website? etc. Study up, follow them and make the most of it so you too can have a book at the top of the list
@Justin, I've absolutely stalked a few best sellers in my day and yeah, I've changed up my keywords. I've even had Amazon update my categories and I've seen some benefit with all of that. All good suggestions!!
J. wrote: "@Justin, I've absolutely stalked a few best sellers in my day and yeah, I've changed up my keywords. I've even had Amazon update my categories and I've seen some benefit with all of that. All goo..."
How do you have amazon update your categories? Does it happen automatically?
@Marina- I've emailed Amazon and told them specifically what I wanted. They were happy to oblige me and it felt like I was getting all these extra categories. I still have the 2 I picked through KDP but they're actually different than what it says on my book page.
J. wrote: "@Marina- I've emailed Amazon and told them specifically what I wanted. They were happy to oblige me and it felt like I was getting all these extra categories. I still have the 2 I picked through KD..."That's wonderful! Thank you for the tips :)
I will say that when I emailed Amazon, I copied and pasted exactly what I wanted into the email so there was no confusion. Hope that helps!
There's a way to contact them about changing categories it's fairly easy to do
I've been working on my keywords which I know realize are separate from picking the right categories. After three weeks I finally got all my books in the categories I want them in so now I sit back and hope it helps.
This is a wonderful thread! I fairly recently published my first kindle book (an adult-geared mystery/p.i. book) and Amazon somehow put it in YA at one point, where it absolutely doesn't belong.So, thank you for this!
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Dan wrote: "This is a wonderful thread! I fairly recently published my first kindle book (an adult-geared mystery/p.i. book) and Amazon somehow put it in YA at one point, where it absolutely doesn't belong.S..."
I figured this one out recently and sent them a warning because I kept seeing this one author pop up in YA with titles that were A without the Y. If you select an age range of anything other than 18+, it automatically adds your book to YA. So if you think 17 is mature enough (think NC-17 rating), bam, YA. They said they were working to fix this.
Ah, that would explain it. I picked 17. The book has a good bit of salty language in it, and if that were the only adulty thing about it, I'd be more okay with the YA. However, it also has a few crime scene depictions and some other fairly dark subject matter, and that's where things start to make that 'Y' not okay. Hopefully Amazon will fix that sooner rather than later!db
This is good to know. I'll definitely give it a shot with my release in May.
Very helpful, CB. Thank you! I really think I missed the mark when adding keywords for my debut novel. I'll keep an eye on things and look at updating them next week.
I finally looked into this tonight and am so grateful for this thread. I'll have to talk to BookBaby this week and see if I can do some fine-tuning to my current keywords. Thank you all!
I made the changes that were suggested through the link you guys provided. I was sooooo happy because the Historical Romance category is huge! And my second category is Historical Romance/Victorian which still has close to 8,000 competing titles. It's incredibly hard to find my book. And my book isn't just romance, it's definitely a historical, so these tricks helped me have it also populate in historical fiction and women's fiction arenas.Bookbaby only allows me 7 keywords and 2 categories. But by following that chart, I unlocked quite a few smaller categories under Kindle e-books:
My favorite part of all was if you simply open Amazon and go to Amazon Kindle and type in "Ottoman Empire" and select fiction, my novel comes up as not only the first page, but the very first book listed! That's not even selecting a century yet :)
These are others that you can actually find my book now pretty easily:
Literature & Fiction/Historical Fiction/Time Periods/19th Century
Romance/Historical Romance/Romantic Themes/International
Romance/Historical Romance/Romantic Heroes/Royalty & Aristocrats
I'll have to see how the month goes, but since I could only gain by the added exposure this is one marketing area I don't think I'll have to re-do. I'm still listed in my original mammoth categories too.
Sam (Rescue Dog Mom & Writer) wrote: "Zoltán wrote: "Has anyone tried 'bestseller' as a tag? :)"Cute. That would get some views. : )"
Unfortunately it's against their policies. :(
K.B. wrote: "Has anyone been able to get in one of the Literature & Fiction subcategories? There's not a main category for Literature & Fiction when you select the categories for your book, so I'm not sure what..."I selected Fiction/Thrillers/Suspense for one of mine and it's showing up as Literature & Fiction.
I'm researching and analyzing keywords and categories right now like a madman. Once I've figured it all out I'll gladly share the information with everyone.
So I managed to unlock some hidden but great categories for my weird western. I rank really low in them and one only has ten books in it so I'll always rank low in it. Reconstruction, Old West and Western-Horror are the categories and I feel they are not only perfect but will hopefully help me in selling more copies.
C.B. wrote: "I accidentally found it! Hidden deep within the Amazon site, a way to determine what the secret categories are that you can unlock with keywords! I just edited my keywords and will see if this gets..."Yes I just recently found out about this too and has been very useful ;)
Awesome, C.B! Thanks for the link. I'm going to update my keywords for my debut novel.
Justin wrote: "So I managed to unlock some hidden but great categories for my weird western. I rank really low in them and one only has ten books in it so I'll always rank low in it. Reconstruction, Old West and ..."Hey Justin. that's awesome. Another tip I got was to enter keywords in the Amazon search bar as that will show the top phrases that users are searching on to find things. Your weird western sounds a bit intriguing - I might have to check it out ;) I started follow up to my recent book but now thinking I might do a short epic fantasy... If there is such a thing!
Julia wrote: "Awesome, C.B! Thanks for the link. I'm going to update my keywords for my debut novel."Julia! Hope it works for you and all the best with your debut ;)
Hi, S. A.!Thanks for your kind words :)
I added all seven keywords to my preorder book and this is what is showing. So, I guess... it's good?
Books > Romance > Contemporary
Books > Romance > Romantic Comedy
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Contemporary
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Romantic Comedy
Thanks S.A! Yes I am aware of the search tip. To improve it type w keyword then go through every letter of the alphabet for another word after it, you'll be surprised by some of the new keywords you end up with.
Thanks so much for sharing this information. After reading it, I changed some of my keywords, and suddenly I'm in two new mystery/suspense categories (political and kidnapping) with better than ever rankings. This group is the best!Kate
Robin wrote: "Thanks for the great tip!"Hi. Is there a link to go to to do these wonderful things? Thanks.
Jeffery wrote: "Robin wrote: "Thanks for the great tip!"Hi. Is there a link to go to to do these wonderful things? Thanks."
Read the first post in the thread please.
Christina wrote: "Jeffery wrote: "Robin wrote: "Thanks for the great tip!"Hi. Is there a link to go to to do these wonderful things? Thanks."
Read the first post in the thread please."
Done. Thank you!
I have a question that relates to this. I've started playing around with my categories and keywords again but am having difficulty with one's for poetry.What do people type in on Amazon when looking for poetry books? So far I've typed tons of ideas on Kindle Rocket and have gotten little results.
Ken pretty much said it but I'll add this. The idea is you want to target keywords that you know people will search and have a low rating which is possible.