When it comes to self-publishing your upcoming book, do not make light of selecting your book categories!
Although it may appear to be a small detail, you must realize that your readers often resort to categories when looking for books on a specific topic.
Therefore, selecting the best book categories for your upcoming bestseller is a critical decision as it will impact your book sales.
Here are more notable reasons why your book should have best-fitting categories:
- It can help you become a bestseller. Like the New York Times bestseller, Amazon can also tag your book with an orange badge that says “#1 Bestseller”. And with thousands of Amazon categories to compete and rank for, this means that there’s plenty of opportunity for you to become an Amazon bestseller!
- You can gain more exposure on Amazon. By appearing in different categories, your book can appeal to different audiences. And if your book ranks in the top ten of any category listings, Amazon will include your book to its “Recommendations Engine” which will generate more publicity!
But with plenty of book categories on Kindle Direct Publishing as well as the plethora of books competing for attention, how do you choose the right categories to make your book stand out to your reader?
In this post, we will share our best strategies to help you pick the right categories for your book that will increase your sales rank and obtain maximum exposure through Amazon’s search engine.
Here are the three topics we will cover:
- How to Research Your Competition
- How to Strategically Select Your Category
- How to Acquire Additional Categories
Let’s get started!
#1 – How to Research Your Competition
If your goal is to appear on the first page of search results on Amazon, then you must take advantage of every window of opportunity to succeed. In order to do so, you first must research your competition.
When you begin researching for book categories, you should start by scanning the bestselling books on every first page results of your target category.
The reason is simply due to the fact that the first page results are most likely what your readers are going to be looking for! Therefore, it’s important to identify the top selling books for each category you want to target.
Next, go through each of the books on the first page results and study its category string links. For example, here are the category links for Taylor Pearson’s book, The End of Jobs:
Notice that for a book on Entrepreneurship, it’s ranked highest for “Labor & Workforce” and “Economics”. This goes to show that by placing their book into such unique categories, the author completely understood their target audience which is why The End of Jobs appears on several first page results.
So if you want to have a high ranking for your category, make it a priority to research your competitors’ categories and emulate their methods with your book.
Action Plan: Research the first page competitors in five categories of your choosing. Take note to any unique categories your competitors rank in, and apply them to your upcoming book.
#2 – How to Strategically Select Your Category
Because the Amazon’s Kindle Store has thousands of categories to choose from as well as an overwhelming amount of books fighting for attention, the competition can be relentless and unfair to new writers. But there is one approach that will have you stand out: Select trending categories with little competition.
What is considered a competitive rank?
We find that any categories with books ranking higher than #2000 is considered very competitive and not a recommended category for new writers. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t place your book in a competitive ranking, but if you do, be sure to have a well planned book launch with a sizable audience that can provide a lot of verified reviews. For new authors with a smaller following, we recommend aiming for certain categories with books that rank between #10,000-30,000.
Once you’ve completed this research, you should have a list of thriving categories to place your book in that will outrank your competitors.
Action Plan: With the five categories you’ve researched, take the time to review your competitors’ ranking that fall between #10,000-30,000. For even better results, we also recommend using the KDP Calculator to calculate how many books you would need to sell in order increase your ranking.
#3 – How to Acquire Additional Categories
When you upload your book for the first time, Amazon will offer you a select list of categories to choose from. At a first glance, you will notice that the selection seems rather limited and is missing plenty of categories that you’ve seen other books rank for. Unfortunately, Amazon has done this intentionally so that they can place new books into their own kindle categories.
Don’t let Amazon determine your categories! There’s thousands of sub-categories you can rank for, and you can even include an additional eight sub-categories not found in the usual channels.
Here how you can acquire these categories:
- Use Amazon Keyword Selection. Include the name of your category as one of your “Amazon Keywords”. In order to obtain a particular category, you must include specific keywords in the Kindle submission form. For more information on Keyword requirements, visit Amazon’s browse category page to learn more.
- Place your categories in strategic places. To convince Amazon that your book should be placed in specific category, strategically work the words of the category onto the title, subtitle or even the summary of your book page.
- Contact Amazon. You can contact Amazon and request your book to be placed in a particular category. Amazon will then assess your entire book and determine if it’s an appropriate fit for the specific browse category. If approved, These categories will appear in the “Look for similar items by category” at the bottom of the book page.
Action Plan: Experiment with these strategies to acquire additional sub-categories for your book. Remember you can include eight additional keywords that can convince Amazon to place your book in the categories of your choosing.
If you want a successful book launch, you must not overlook even the tiniest of details.
By following these guidelines on how to select your book category, your first book will have maximum exposure and the best chance to appear in the Amazon bestseller list.
Disclosure: Some of the links above may contain affiliate partnerships, meaning, at no additional cost to you, Self-Publishing School may earn a comission if you click through to make a purchase.
Laura Lynn says:
Great post!! Packed with excellent and useful information.
Lise Cartwright says:
Yes! Thanks Scott for reminding me of this, I knew about this ‘hack’ but had completely forgotten about it, just went and did it for my latest book. Thanks for providing the exact layout on what to do, super helpful 🙂
Virginia Reeves says:
Scott – this will be helpful as in my categories (general self-help) there are thousands of books. Thanks.
Carrie Poplar Sechel says:
Thanks Scott – this article is great and has so much useful info!!
Alan McComas says:
Great info Scott. You always come through for me at the right time. I can’t wait to implement this in the next few days.
Qat Wanders says:
This is so helpful! I will be using these tips for my upcoming book launch for sure!
Lindsey Hulstrom says:
Excellent advice loaded with great information. Thank you for such a helpful article. You’ve done all the research! Appreciate it.
Sean Sumner says:
Such a great post! I will be doing this today for my books.
AirplaneJane says:
Thank you for putting this together to help others. It is is always great to see people sharing how they created success. Much appreciated. The kindness will bless you 10x over
Chandler Bolt says:
Agreed! Thanks Scott
Chandler Bolt says:
Just did it for mine 🙂
Chandler Bolt says:
Agreed. Scott is the man!
Chandler Bolt says:
Always implementing quickly, Lise! Kudos 🙂
Chandler Bolt says:
Definitely helps there
Scott Allan says:
Thanks, Laura!
Scott Allan says:
Thanks Lise, glad to hear you found it useful!
Scott Allan says:
Yes, it will certainly add weight to your book’s visibility. Thanks Virginia!
Scott Allan says:
Glad to hear that, Carrie!
Scott Allan says:
Sounds great, let me know how it works out!
Scott Allan says:
Good luck on your launch, Qat!
Scott Allan says:
My pleasure, Lindsey!
Scott Allan says:
That7s why we are here, to help each other out. Thanks for reading the post!
Scott Allan says:
Right on, Sean!
Satella DeVeaux says:
Scott, once again you knocked it out of the park loaded with tons of practical information.
daniel thomas says:
Thanks a lot for this post. I have already applied its lessons to the three book titles that will be released on KDP Select this Tuesday (Zen Arcade: Classic Video Game Reviews, Pop Life, Greatest Hits: An Anthology in Four Volumes). I struggled a bit with finding the categories that I wanted when setting up the ebooks, but now that I can simply send a message to the Amazon support team, that makes everything much easies. Hopefully, they will make the changes I requested in the coming days, and that will help the sales rankings of my books (which are already in the Top 100 in their categories).
Stefan says:
Great advice, I can’t wait to apply it to my new book.
Chandler Bolt says:
🙂
Chandler Bolt says:
Did it work for you?
Chandler Bolt says:
Agreed!
daniel thomas says:
Yes, it worked very well. I was able to have all books in highly-ranked categories. This was especially effective during my “five free days” promotion, where I completely crushed all my categories. Much thanks for the very effective advice.
GR says:
Thank you so much Scott, super helpful post!
Nick Zizi says:
Great article! Easy to understand and succinct. I am currently setting up the categories for my new book. With all the info available online about this topic this is by far the easiest to understand. Thank you for sharing!
Chandler Bolt says:
Glad you found it helpful!
Chandler Bolt says:
Thanks GR!
Margarita Marti March says:
How many categories am I allowed in total?
Chandler Bolt says:
10 total
Jerri Udelson says:
How do I get more categories if my book is only published in paperback and not in a Kindle format? Thanks in advance.
Kate Riley says:
The exact same way! Just contact KDP Support via your dashboard, and request that your paperback be added to additional categories.
Also, keep in mind that if you ever edit your book listing, you don’t have to worry about your categories resetting. Your book will always stay in the additional categories unless you contact them again and ask to change them up.