Surprising Facts about Book Categories on Amazon

Getting metadata right is the secret sauce to success for a book. Making your book discoverable to the right readers is essential. We've seen it work in favor of a book in big ways. And we've also spotted issues where a book sales suddenly drop off and we uncover a metadata issue. So understanding metadata is critical and categories are one of those oh so important pieces of the metadata mystery. But there are three things about Amazon categories in particular that surprise most authors. If you're curious about this and you want to get your categories right, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie, the book broad of book launchers. We're a professional self publishing services company. As part of our service, we have a researcher on our team who does some super important metadata research for your book, including researching bisect codes, categories, competition, pricing and and keywords for Amazon as well as for Google. Because we're doing that research, we get some clients that are really puzzled when their book lands in a category that's a little wonky to what their book is about. If you've ever had that happen, you might be surprised to learn a few of the oddities about Amazon and their categories. First, it's important to know that the Kindle ebook store, the Amazon Bookstore, which is for print books, and ACX for Audible, which is your audiobook, all have slightly different categories. Yep, you can view all the categories by going to the bestseller lists of the store and checking them out. All you have to do is navigate the sidebar. When you search bestsellers, you see they compile all the formats, which is why when I searched, I just clicked on James Clear. He's on this bestseller list twice, both in his print format and his audiobook format. When I click the audiobook cover, it takes me into the Audible store. So you can see the categories we're looking at are now on audio. You can do the same thing for print and ebook and you're going to see the difference in category for this by bookstore. That said, James Clear is a top selling book, so he's in the highest categories. What you need to focus on is the sub sub categories. So rather than clicking on individual books like that, we want to focus on the subcategories. So to see the sub subcategories you can click on the sidebar and click down and you just keep clicking until it stops offering new subcategories. When you've done that, you've reached the deepest sub level. Do this for each store to see the depth. I just quickly did this to get to the subcategory of leadership under management and leadership, which is a subcategory under business and money. I also have to note that different countries have different categories as well, so if you do this for Amazon CA for example, you're going to get slightly different results. Yeah, it's a wild and crazy journey. Which brings me to surprise number two. You want to list your book in a deep subcategory because all the books in a subcategory will show up in its parent category. For example, listing your book on leadership strategies for millennials in business and money would be a huge waste of time because you'd miss out on all the visibility spots offered by digging down into management and finding there are further subcategories like management skills that would be more specific to your book. Once you've found all the categories that could make sense for your book, it's time to analyze them. You want to get a sense of how competitive they are and how visibility they bring. Now, my favorite tool this can be a surprise to the regular viewers is Publisher Rocket. I've got a link for you to use below. If you don't already have it. You can do the initial search and quickly scan the sub sub subcategories. When you do that, you'll see that a subcategory I mentioned above is really competitive, but there are some other categories where you're likely to rank with minimal sales. Publisher Rocket has this handy column that shows you number of sales to hit the top 10 in that category. Check this out. Now ultimately, when you find a category that doesn't need more than 10 to 20 sales to hit top 10, you want to click the listings to make sure your book fits and that you're not up against some big hitters. You want categories that have top books. All that said, you don't only want niche categories with low sales because they're not likely searched very often. So there's a balance. Now, if your book's already out and you're trying to figure out what categories you're already in, I'm just about to tell you about a tool that you can also use to see where books you're competing with are listed so you can borrow their ideas. But first, smash that like button if you like uncovering cool tips like how to spy on your book competitors. Now heading on into surprise number three, which is something that really surprised me. You don't actually get to choose the categories you're in with Amazon, which is why you can end up in some wonky categories you select to bisect codes, and Amazon chooses from there. What? After all this research, you don't even get to choose your Amazon categories? Well, not exactly. This is why you can find yourself in some unexpected places. Here's the specific instructions from Amazon's website. Now, as much as you can request categories directly from Amazon, Amazon actually uses your bisect categories to place you in addition to any suggestions you may give them. But you can also use your keyword boxes to get your book included in other categories but straight from Amazon's website. Website they also say, and keywords that best describe your book. So that's the secret right there. Your keywords are one place where you can influence your category. Amazon also tells you to be specific and not be redundant. And after all this effort, Amazon still doesn't show you the categories your book is listed in. So you won't even know what worked and what didn't. Unless you know that there's a website out there that will show you what categories your book or any book listed on Amazon is in. For that matter, the the tool you can use is bkink.com or is it L? It might be BKL. Yeah, it's bklnk.com I'll put it below you enter your ASIN in and it will show you where you're at. If you're not happy with the listings or a category is just not a fit, you can reach out to KDP's help center and let them know there's an issue or that your book really should be in a different place. Technically, your book can be listed in up to 10 or 12 categories, and Amazon is as interested as you are and in getting your book into the right categories. So this usually works. There's so much more to cover in this subject, but if you're ever not sure, read the material on the KDP site. They often spell it out on their help pages, but many authors just don't read it all carefully enough. Now that you've been surprised by all of this, you might be wondering what other metadata matters. Well, this video right here is a little embarrassing, as I went to great lengths to make metadata interesting. But it covers that topic right here. And if you're good with that and you're just wondering what other awesome content we've put out recently, well, that video is right here for you. Either way, let's be friends. So drop a comment below and then head to my next video. I'm excited to learn about you and spend some more time together.