It’s hard to find time each day or week to market your books. Especially if you’re also working another job. One thing you can do once to help books sales is to add Amazon categories.
When you upload your book on the KDP Dashboard (which you can use to publish a Kindle ebook or paperback edition) you’ll be asked to choose two categories.
But where do you check out other books in those categories?
And are you limited to just two?
Number Of Categories
About a year ago at a writing conference a speaker said that if you contact KDP support, you can request a total of up to ten categories. So that’s eight in addition to the original two.
While I haven’t found an official rule confirming that, when I’ve requested additional categories, they’ve been added.
You do that through the KDP Help once you’re signed into KDP. You need to provide the ASIN for the Kindle edition of the book, its title, and the categories.
What’s New
The first time I asked for additional categories, I copied them from the sales page of books that I thought were similar to mine. A KDP support person added most of them.
For a couple, the support person advised that categories had changed but added my book into similar ones.
I still think this is a good way to get ideas.
But when I requested categories this week, I discovered I hadn’t conformed with current requirements.
In my first request for my latest non-fiction book Happiness, Anxiety, and Writing: Using Your Creativity To Lead A Calmer, Happier Life, I asked for these categories:
- Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Self-Help > Stress Management
- Books > Self-Help > Anxieties & Phobias
- Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Personal Health > Healthy Living
- Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Counseling & Psychology > Mental Health > Mental Illness
- Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Counseling & Psychology > Pathologies
- Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Counseling & Psychology > Mental Health > Mood Disorders
- Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Mood Disorders
- Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Counseling & Psychology > Pathologies > Anxieties & Phobias
KDP Support responded that I needed to choose specific, current Kindle categories, which apparently I hadn’t done.
Where To Find Them
It turns out you find the current categories on the New Release page.
The email also advised that the categories are different for each Amazon company. So the U.K. might have different categories than the U.S.
On the U.S. page I found on the left hand side toward the middle a broad list of categories. Clicking on each expanded to sub-categories.
Sometimes there were multiple layers of sub-categories. I had to drill down quite a bit to get to ones that struck me as worthwhile. Doing that took me over an hour.
Better Something Than Nothing
In a perfect world I’d investigate the top books in each possible category. Ideally, my book would be similar to those in the Top 20 or so. Also, I’d want books in the Top 20 that didn’t rank so high (say in the Top 5,000 overall) that I’d need massive sales to get there.
I’d also want ones where the Top 20 books didn’t rank so low (say 200,000 and up overall) that probably no one is browsing those categories.
But because I’d already spent over an hour, I had other things to get done (including write), and it’s better to do something than nothing, I skipped that research.
Instead I picked what I thought were the best categories based on the topics and the number of reviews the books had. I requested the following:
- Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Self-Help : Stress Management
- Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Self-Help : Happiness
- Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Health, Fitness & Dieting : Counseling & Psychology : Mental Health : Mood Disorders
- Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Health, Fitness & Dieting : Counseling & Psychology : Pathologies : Anxieties & Phobias
- Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Reference : Words, Language & Grammar : Reference
- Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Reference : Writing, Research & Publishing Guides : Writing Skills
- Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Reference : Writing, Research & Publishing Guides : Nonfiction
- Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Reference : Writing, Research & Publishing Guides : Publishing & Books
I left researching other countries for another day.
It may not be the perfect list. But at least there will be more places where U.S. readers may come across the books.
That’s all for today. Until next Friday–
L.M. Lilly