As most authors are self-publishing today, they need to know about Amazon’s book categories.
When you upload your book to Amazon, you’re able to choose specific categories under which your book will be listed. This is something you need to take advantage of.
Do your research and determine which categories best fit your book.
If you’re having a service upload your book, you should make sure you know what categories the service is using.
How many categories can you choose from?
Categories are a crucial element of your book marketing and sales; you should use as many categories as you’re allowed. With Amazon’s latest update (May 2023), you can only choose THREE categories with Amazon. Prior to that, you could have ten categories.
You can, though, choose a subcategory for each category.
Note: Books that were previously published in more than three categories will remain in all those categories unless the author updates them.
Categories matter.
According to Geoff Affleck, a self-publishing and book marketing expert, "selecting the best Amazon book categories is one of the most important and overlooked aspects of publishing and one of the easiest to do. Most self-published authors and professional publishers give little thought to the category placement."
So, what exactly do categories do for your book?
Think of categories as a step above keywords. You might think of categories as the house that holds the keywords.
The categories and selected keywords help Amazon determine where to ‘shelve’ or place your book in its digital store.
For my The Adventures of Planetman picture book series, the categories I chose are:
Books / Children’s Books / Action and Adventure
Books / Science Fiction and Fantasy / Fantasy Superheroes
The keywords for Book 1, The Case of the Plastic Rings, are superheroes, friendship, environment, conservation, puppy, plastic rings, and picture book.
Looking at a different theme, suppose you’ve written a children’s fiction picture book focusing on a child owning a pet – the responsibility and caring involved.
The categories might be:
Books / Fiction / Children’s Book
The keywords might be:
Picture books
Responsibility
Caring for a pet
Pet ownership
This example should help you get an idea of what to look for.
While Amazon buyers don't usually browse books by categories, if your book is selling well, Amazon takes note of the categories your book is in. Their algorithm will give you a higher ranking for that category which means your book will be suggested to more customers.
It's kind of a popularity contest.
This is why keeping track of your book's categories is essential. It shouldn’t be a create-and-leave situation.
Suppose a new category opens up that's more focused on your book's subject matter. You would no doubt want to swap it out for a category that's less connected.
Or maybe you're keeping track of other books in your subject matter, and they're doing very well; you might want to use their categories.
Knowing what categories are getting traction and visibility will give you the opportunity to use the categories to bring more attention / visibility to your books.
In addition to book categories and keywords, you can also add genre-specific terms to the book description to boost your book’s ranking for those themes.
While this article focuses on Amazon, you should follow the same marketing strategy for any other aggregator or distributor you list your book with.
I’m a working children’s ghostwriter, rewriter, editor, and coach. I can help turn your story into a book you’ll be proud to be the author of, one that’s publishable and marketable.
