Julie Broad walks through choosing up to three categories for your audiobook on Audible and ACX. Use Publisher Rocket to check which categories have the best sales potential, then request your picks via an ACX form or email from your account. Make sure your cover, title, and description match the category you're targeting.
Questions this video answers
Three.
Use the ACX Category Change form or email ACX from the account email address including the book title, ASIN, and the full category listing for each desired category.
Chapters
Your audiobook is ready to sell and you're uploading it to ACX to list on Audible and you might be surprised to discover there's only one category to choose from. What? Well, how are you going to choose a single category for your book? Well, guess what, you're not actually stuck with one box. And there are a few other things you should know when selling an audiobook on acx. So if you want the details on all of that, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julia the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, where we help you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that will grow your brand and your business. So first, a little hat tip to Dave Chessen over at Kindlepreneur for his recent article on this topic, which gave me the inspiration for this video. I'll link to his article down below, but it made me realize we have talked a lot about categories on KDP and the keywords you'll input there, but we haven't spent a lot of time talking about ACX and Audible categories and except to say they're different than the ones you'll use on the print books and the Kindle books. So first, there aren't that many audiobook categories at this time, at least not when you compare it to the number of Kindle categories. In Dave Cheston's article he referenced 200 audible categories. My favorite way to check all this stuff is using Publisher Rocket and you can get a copy with our affiliate link@book launchers.com Rocket open up Rocket and you can switch right on over to Audible. You'll see how few subcategories there are under the big category. Now just for comparison, let's take a look at the Kindle categories. Now you're going to see how many sub sub sub categories there are for each of the big ones. There are tons of subcategories under Memoir in Kindle as an example. So what does this tell you? Well, it's really important to put yourself in the right categories on Audible and so that you have the best chance of being discovered and that you're sitting beside the right books so that somebody who just finishes listening to one that's like your book is going to get recommended yours. So scroll down to the product details area of the page and look for the best sellers rank. That's going to tell you which categories your book is in Currently. Pay close attention to your audiobook specific categories in this section as these will be the ones to note. Now there are manual ways to do this research But Rocket is such a good tool and it doesn't cost very much. There's no recurring software charge, so that's why I recommend it over and over to authors rather than doing all this work manually. Anyway, what you want to do is take a look at the category that is a good fit and that you can be competitive in. The cool thing about Rocket is that it shows you not just that information on the categories, but sales you'd need in order to make number one bestseller in that Audible category or be in the top 10 in that category. It also shows you the percentage of publishing companies competing in that Audible category and a lot more detail. So now you can start to see a few categories where you have a good shot at standing out in the top 10 and even hitting the top of that category. When you're running promotions, which means you're much more likely to be seen by readers or listeners, as it were, you probably want to avoid those categories where it's 90% plus of big publishers and there are hundreds and hundreds of books needed to sell to hit the top 10. That's going to be a tough one to stand out in as an indie author. So using this tool, you can so much more efficiently spot opportunities for categories that you want to be featured in with your book. After you've found some categories that look like they'll be a good fit, you want to then go and check that out on Amazon and Audible to make sure your book is going to be competitive there and that it belongs there. I always tell authors that you might love your cover, but if you don't have a cover that will fit in and stand out in a category, it doesn't matter if you love it. So make sure your cover, your title, your description, and just the overall content of your book are going to appeal to the readers of that category. It's important to take some time to make these selections. You can choose three categories, but you can only choose three and Audible can override your choice if they want to. So your book does have to fit. Now here's how you have to do this to get your three category selections. Once you have it ready to go, you you have to contact ACX to get the additional categories considered. You have two options to do this one. ACX Category Change form, which I'll link to the form in the description below. You'll have to go to the form, log into your account, and then fill out the information. The second option is to email ACX directly. You're going to email supportcx.com from the email address that you have the account in. You cannot send an email from a different address or they're not going to act on your message. You're going to include the title of your book, your asin, and, of course, list the three categories, including the entire category listing. So this might be Audible Books and Originals, Business and Careers, Career Success and Motivation and Self Improvement. That's the entire category. Now, while you're at it, if you want to give away or sell your audiobook direct, well, here's how to sell it or give it away through Book Funnel. Or if you don't want that, well, here's the latest and greatest from the channel. Go ahead, click on over. I'll see you there.
